Justice Samuel Alito Jr., perhaps the Supreme Court’s most reliable conservative, and the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, one of the court’s liberal lions, would seem to be polar opposites as judges. But as an Alito opinion this week showed, they may have found some common ground on religious freedom.

In a case about prayer by a high school football coach, Alito hinted the justices should revisit two seminal religious discrimination decisions, both of which Marshall also thought were wrongly decided in 1977 and 1990.