The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that it is unconstitutional for Maine to exclude religious schools from a program that provides tuition assistance for students to attend private schools.
The Court, in a 6-3 ruling in Carson v. Makin, found that the program violates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
The program requires rural communities without public secondary schools to either sign contracts with nearby public schools or to pay tuition at a private school chosen by parents that is a “nonsectarian school in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
The case stems from a lawsuit filed by two families in Maine who send or want to send their children to religious schools. The families argued the restriction violated their right to freely exercise their faith.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that while “a state need not subsidize private education” that “once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
“Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote. “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.”
Roberts said that the program “effectively penalizes the free exercise” of religion by doling out benefits based upon whether a school is religious.
The three liberal justices dissented.
“With growing concern for where this Court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
She continued: “What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the Court was ‘lead[ing] us . . . to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.’ Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. “
Maine argued in a Supreme Court brief that both of the schools involved in the case “candidly admit that they discriminate against homosexuals, individuals who are transgender and non-Christians.”
Temple Academy’s teachers “integrate biblical principles with their teaching in every subject” and teaches students to ‘spread the word of Christianity.” While Bangor Christian Schools hopes to cultivate “within each student a Christian worldview and Christian philosophy of life.”