Maine sued again for blocking religious schools from school choice program

Maine
is back in court over its tuition assistance program for rural families as a
Catholic
school and parents are suing over the state’s exclusion of
faith-based schools
.

St. Dominic Academy, a high school in the Diocese of Portland, and parents Keith and Valori Radonis are
suing Maine
for barring them from using funds from the assistance program for expressing religious belief.

“As Catholic parents, we want to provide our children with an education that helps them grow in heart, mind, and spirit, preparing them for lives of service to God and neighbor,” the
couple said in a statement
. “All families should have the option to provide the education that’s right for their children using Maine’s tuition program, including religious families like ours.”

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Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against Maine’s law excluding faith-based families from the tuition program in Carson v. Makin, but the Pine Tree State revised its law shortly before the decision came down to block faith-based schools from receiving money if they “discriminate[s] between two religions.”

The new law would require that if St. Dominic holds Mass, it would also have to hold a Baptist revival meeting, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the plaintiffs,
said
in a press release. In addition, it gives the state’s Human Rights Commission the power to determine how Catholic schools teach children about marriage, family, and gender.

“Maine lawmakers boasted about changing the law to avoid the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson,” Becket senior counsel Adele Auxier Keim said. “That’s illegal and unfair. We are confident that Maine’s new laws will be struck down just like their old ones were.”

After the Carson decision came down, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey
said
he was “extremely disappointed” in it, adding, “They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff.”

“It is disturbing that the Supreme Court found that parents also have the right to force the public to pay for an education that is fundamentally at odds with values we hold dear,” he continued, vowing to “explore” ways to “ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry” despite the court opinion.

Maine had allowed its tuition assistance program to be extended to religious institutions until 1982, when it decided to exclude them. While the program funded tuition for children to go to out-of-state and out-of-country schools, it barred religious schools until last year’s Carson decision.

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“Maine is willing to pay for kids to go to all-girls boarding schools in Massachusetts and public schools in Quebec, but parents who choose Catholic schools like St. Dominic — which have been educating Maine kids for more than a century — are still out in the cold,” Keim said.

Frey did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.