Maine AG’s response to Supreme Court win for religious schools blasted as ‘baffling and offensive’

Maine Legal professional Normal Aaron Frey was blasted for hitting the brakes on spiritual faculties celebrations after the Supreme Court docket struck down a state regulation prohibiting them from receiving public funds.

In a 6-3 determination, the Court docket dominated final week in Carson v. Makin that the state of Maine had violated the free train of faith clause in the First Modification for spiritual faculties, by exempting them from their tuition help program. 

Frey launched a press release following the Court docket’s preliminary ruling, sharing his disappointment and itemizing what he thought of the ills of the spiritual establishments named within the lawsuit. In response to the AG, the 2 faculties concerned within the lawsuit, Temple Academy in Waterville or Bangor Christian Colleges, have insurance policies that discriminate in opposition to college students and employees when it comes to sexual orientation or gender identification, stopping their participation within the tuition program. He stated that each one faculties receiving state tuition should abide by the Maine Human Proper Act, which bans discriminating in opposition to somebody due to their race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or incapacity.  

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“I’m terribly dissatisfied and disheartened by as we speak’s determination,” Frey stated within the assertion. “Public schooling ought to expose youngsters to a wide range of viewpoints, promote tolerance and understanding, and put together youngsters for all times in a various society. The schooling offered by the colleges at subject right here is inimical to a public schooling. They promote a single faith to the exclusion of all others, refuse to confess homosexual and transgender youngsters, and overtly discriminate in hiring academics and employees. One faculty teaches youngsters that the husband is to be the chief of the family.”  

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“Whereas mother and father have the appropriate to ship their youngsters to such faculties, it’s disturbing that the Supreme Court docket discovered that folks even have the appropriate to power the general public to pay for an schooling that’s basically at odds with values we maintain pricey,” he continued. “I intend to discover with Governor Mills’ administration and members of the Legislature statutory amendments to handle the Court docket’s determination and be certain that public cash shouldn’t be used to advertise discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.” 

Exterior United States Supreme Court docket June 25
(Fox Information Digital/Lisa Bennatan)

Jacob Posik, director of communications at Maine Coverage Institute, wrote in an op-ed for the Bangor Day by day Information that Frey is “scrambling to vary the statute.” He expanded on what he framed because the folly of Frey’s arguments in an interview with Fox Information Digital. Frey urged in his assertion that this system is meant to offer the equal of a public schooling. However, Posik stated, “nothing could possibly be farther from the reality.” Maine enacted the state tuition program in 1873, he famous, and it was used to ship youngsters to spiritual faculties till the exclusion was codified in 1981.

“So for him to say that this program was by no means supposed for use this manner, it is simply completely devoid of historic context and the fact,” Posik stated, including that Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated a lot of the identical within the courtroom’s opinion. 

“However he begins off by reiterating feedback that the courtroom struck down,” Posik stated of Frey. “He says public funds can’t be used to attend a non-public faculty that promotes faith as a result of such faculties, by definition, don’t present the equal of a public schooling. After which if you happen to really undergo – if you happen to undergo the ruling and skim it, John Roberts actually eviscerates him. He says the statute would not say something of the such.”   

“After which so for him to for him to reiterate the identical argument that he made earlier than the courtroom, that the courtroom rejected and put it out in a press launch, is past irresponsible,” he later added.

Activists flocked to the Supreme Court docket following the overturn of Roe v. Wade on Friday June 24, 2022. 
(Fox Information Digital/Lisa Bennatan)

Carroll Conley, government director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, advised Fox Information Digital why he believed Frey’s assertion was “the very definition of bigotry.”

“We commend the nation’s highest courtroom for putting down Maine’s 40-year discriminatory prohibition of sectarian faculties’ participation in tuition applications,” Conley stated. “Our AG‘s response to dropping this case was concurrently baffling and offensive. His assertion that sectarian faculties are ‘inimical to a public schooling’ merely for not aligning with the state’s orthodoxy concerning human sexuality is the very definition of bigotry.” 

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He provided some hypotheticals as he continued to slam the lawyer basic’s authorized threats.

“Does AG Frey contend {that a} Hebrew faculty is working towards intolerance for insisting its Torah teacher be an adherent of Judaism?” Conley requested. “Would a Muslim faculty who selected to not make use of a male kindergarten trainer expressing himself as a feminine be disqualified for discrimination? Would a parochial faculty be thought of bigoted for permitting college students to specific themselves as cats or canines? I have no idea of anybody who thought the state of Maine would prevail on this case, and but our Legal professional Normal insists on losing taxpayers’ cash by ignoring this ruling and pursuing authorized motion that will thwart this growth of academic option to households no matter their monetary circumstances.”

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“It seems the Maine Legal professional Normal is not uninterested in dropping but,” Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow on the American Federation for Youngsters and a board member of Liberty Justice Heart, advised Fox Information Digital. “After opponents of academic freedom took an enormous L on the Supreme Court docket of america final week, they’re already greedy at straws making an attempt to determine different methods to discriminate in opposition to spiritual households. Additional discrimination in opposition to spiritual households would violate the free train clause of the First Modification of the U.S. Structure. SCOTUS has constantly dominated in favor of spiritual liberties in schooling. If Maine needs to lose once more by looking for different methods to discriminate in opposition to spiritual households, so be it.”

College selection proponents cheered the Maine spiritual faculty ruling as a win for his or her motion as a result of it may open doorways for applications that supply mother and father extra management over their youngsters’ schooling.