Supreme Court Ruling Defends Religious Freedom in Education

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“Supreme Court” by Mark Fischer is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0.
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This issue is now dead in the water for all intents and purposes.

One of the last “loopholes” present to prevent freedom of religion in education has just been obliterated.

A decades-old Maine law has just been set aside by the Supreme Court, ruled to be unconstitutional.

This is a huge win for anyone of faith, or that merely wants their child to get a better education, not just conservatives.

More Than Religion

At question was whether or not parents in Maine could still receive educational benefits if their children went to a religious school, any religious school.

Since the 1980s, a law was amended for Maine parents’ tuition benefits.

Prior to that, there was no caveat regarding the types of schools parents could send their children to.

This was necessary because certain areas were not populated enough to justify school construction.

Carson v. Makin challenged that ruling, and the Supreme Court sided with parents.

The ruling came down along ideological lines at 6-3, which tells you all you need to know about our liberal justices in terms of religious freedom in this country.

Justice Roberts’ majority opinion stated, “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 opinion concluded, “[A] neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizations through the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause.”

A lower court in Maine had concluded that the benefit was the “rough equivalent of the public school education that Maine may permissible require to be secular.”

Roberts disagreed, stating, “The benefit is tuition at a public or private school, selected by the parent, with no suggestion that the ‘private school’ must somehow provide a ‘public’ education.”

Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion was utterly ridiculous, claiming that Maine is now funding religious schools, but that is hardly the case.

The state is not providing a school; this provision was put in place so that certain areas of Maine would NOT have to build schools.

Breyer stated, “This is a situation ripe for conflict, as it forces Maine into the position of evaluating the adequacy or appropriateness of the schools’ religiously inspired curriculum.”

He added that Maine does not want this role, nor should it be forced to take this role on, but again, he is wrong.

It is simply a parental choice in areas without schools for their children to attend.

Roberts directly addressed this, stating that Breyer was wrong because “Maine chose to allow some parents to direct state tuition payments to private schools; that decision was not ‘forced upon’ it.”

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Anthony Smith

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