Supreme Court Rejects Maine’s Ban on Aid to Religious Schools

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Courtroom dominated on Tuesday that Maine might not exclude non secular faculties from a state tuition program. The choice, from a court docket that has grown exceptionally receptive to claims from non secular individuals and teams in a wide range of settings, was the most recent in a sequence of rulings requiring the federal government to help non secular establishments on the identical phrases as different non-public organizations.

The vote was 6 to three, with the court docket’s three liberal justices in dissent.

The case, Carson v. Makin, No. 20-1088, arose from an uncommon program in Maine, which requires rural communities with out public secondary faculties to rearrange for his or her younger residents’ educations in certainly one of two methods. They will signal contracts with close by public faculties, or they’ll pay tuition at a personal college chosen by mother and father as long as it’s, within the phrases of a state regulation, “a nonsectarian college in accordance with the First Modification of the USA Structure.”

Two households in Maine that ship or need to ship their kids to spiritual faculties challenged the regulation, saying it violated their proper to freely train their religion.

One of many faculties at subject within the case, Temple Academy in Waterville, Maine, says it expects its lecturers “to combine biblical ideas with their instructing in each topic” and teaches college students “to unfold the phrase of Christianity.” The opposite, Bangor Christian Colleges, says it seeks to develop “inside every pupil a Christian worldview and Christian philosophy of life.”

The 2 faculties “candidly admit that they discriminate in opposition to homosexuals, people who’re transgender and non-Christians,” Maine’s Supreme Courtroom temporary mentioned.

The case was broadly much like one from Montana determined by the court docket in 2020, Espinoza v. Montana Division of Income. In that case, the court docket dominated that states should enable non secular faculties to take part in packages that present scholarships to college students attending non-public faculties.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for almost all within the Montana case, mentioned a provision of the state’s Structure banning assist to colleges run by church buildings ran afoul of the U.S. Structure’s safety of the free train of faith by discriminating in opposition to non secular individuals and faculties.

“A state needn’t subsidize non-public schooling,” the chief justice wrote. “However as soon as a state decides to take action, it can’t disqualify some non-public faculties solely as a result of they’re non secular.”

However the Montana choice turned on the colleges’ non secular standing, not their curriculums. There could also be a distinction, Chief Justice Roberts mentioned, between an establishment’s non secular id and its conduct.

“We acknowledge the purpose,” he wrote, “however needn’t study it right here.”

The brand new case from Maine resolved that open query.

The Supreme Courtroom has lengthy held that states might select to offer assist to spiritual faculties together with different non-public faculties. The query within the circumstances from Montana and Maine was the alternative one: Could states refuse to offer such assist whether it is made accessible to different non-public faculties?