With a series a positive supreme court rulings, one may have been lost in the shuffle…. the justices approved the use of public money for religious education.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that state programs providing money for public school tuition cannot exclude schools that offer religious instruction. The vote was 6-3.
At issue was a state program in Maine that made taxpayer money available to families who live in remote areas without public high schools. Under the state law, they could use the money for their children’s tuition at public or private schools in other communities, but not for sectarian schools, defined as those that promote a particular faith or belief system and teach material “through the lens of this faith.”
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said Maine’s program “promotes stricter separation of church and state than the federal Constitution requires.”
The tuition program is not neutral, he said, because “the state pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.”
He also noted that the state money does not go directly to schools but flows “through the independent choices of private benefit recipients.”
The ruling was a loss for the Biden administration that opposed tax money being used at sectarian schools.