There have been no decisions announced yet in the big cases (abortion, 2nd amendment). However, religious freedom and the free exercise thereof was affirmed by the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to protect religious liberty and to end state-sponsored discrimination against religious education. This decision may be bigger than many people realize.
On Wednesday, December 8, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging a Maine policy which provides state funds for students who do not have a local public secondary school to attend private school, but not private religious school. The funds go to the students, not directly to the schools.
Here’s how Scotusblog described the case issues and background:
The dispute, Carson v. Makin, centers on the system that Maine uses to ensure that all school-aged children in the state have an opportunity to receive a free public education. With fewer than 180,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, distributed over 260 school districts, not all school districts operate their own secondary schools. Instead, some districts make arrangements with specific private schools or other public schools to take their students. And other school districts allow their students to choose their own public or private school and pay their tuition. However, the Maine program only allows tuition payments to go to private schools that are “nonsectarian” – that is, schools that do not provide religious instruction.
The issue here is that religion was being discriminated against. That’s not how the country is supposed to work. No one should be forced to adopt a particular religion or to have to be religious at all. However, one cannot discriminate against people and/or institutions based solely on their free exercise of religion.
Chief Justice Roberts writes for the majority, with Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor dissenting:
Maine has enacted a program of tuition assistance for parents who live in school districts that do not operate a secondary school of their own. Under the program, parents designate the secondary school they would like their child to attend—public or private—and the school district transmits payments to that school to help defray the costs of tuition. Most private schools are eligible to receive the payments, so long as they are “nonsectarian.” The question presented is whether this restriction violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment….
Maine may provide a strictly secular education in its public schools. But BCS and Temple Academy—like numerous other recipients of Maine tuition assistance payments—are not public schools. In order to provide an education to children who live in certain parts of its far-flung State, Maine has decided not to operate schools of its own, but instead to offer tuition assistance that parents may direct to the public or private schools of their choice. Maine’s administration of that benefit is subject to the free exercise principles governing any such public benefit program—including the prohibition on denying the benefit based on a recipient’s religious exercise.
The dissents are wrong to say that under our decision today Maine “must” fund religious education. Post, at 7 (BREYER, J., dissenting). Maine chose to allow some parents to direct state tuition payments to private schools; that decision was not “forced upon” it. Post, at 4 (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting). The State retains a number of options: it could expand the reach of its public school system, increase the availability of transportation, provide some combination of tutoring, remote learning, and partial attendance, or even operate boarding schools of its own. As we held in Espinoza, a “State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.” 591 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20)….
Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Of course, the insane leftists will be overwrought about Maine being forced to fund religious education. However, that’s not what this opinion says. What it says is that if the state chooses to fund private education, it cannot discriminate against private religious education.
This is a huge win for the school choice movement! Fund the student not the system. The ensuing competition will either drive out bad policies in government schools or the low performing government schools will collapse as they are abandoned by parents who want the best education possible for their children.
This ruling couldn’t have come at a better time. Post-pandemic frustration with one-size-fits-all public schooling has resulted in a skyrocketing demand for programs that let parents, not the government, determine a path for their children’s education. Some states already see 25% of the school age children not attending public schools. Home schooling, private schools and charter schools are taking up more of the task of educating our kids.
One final note: While it is always dicey to predict the outcome of a particular case, it seems that, with this particular court, more outcomes and opinions are based on the Constitution. It is about time. The Supreme Court should not be making law.