The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the state of Maine cannot exclude private Christian schools from a taxpayer-funded school voucher program that helps students attend private schools.
the 6-3 decision of the conservative majority of the high court in the case of Carson vs Makin it could have broader implications for impacts on public schools and whether the government is required to support religious institutions on the same level as private ones.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Supreme Court “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the architects fought to build.”
“The consequences of the Court’s rapid overhaul of the Religion Clauses should not be underestimated,” he wrote, warning that the court is undermining fundamental First Amendment protections that prevent the government from imposing religious views.
Justice Sotomayor pointed to a dissent she wrote in 2017, when she wrote that she feared the Supreme Court would “steer[ing] us … to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.”
“Today, the court is taking us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation,” he wrote in his June 21 dissent. “If a state cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being obligated to fund religious exercise, any state that values its historical anti-establishment interests more than this court will have to scale back the support it offers its citizens. With growing concern about where this court will take us next, he respectfully disagrees.”
Under Maine’s program, students in rural areas that are too small to support a public school system may be eligible to receive state-funded aid to attend private schools, as long as those schools are not religiously affiliated or “ a nonsectarian school according to the First Amendment,” according to the state Department of Education.
One of the schools involved in the case, Temple Academy in Waterville, instructs teachers to “integrate biblical principles” into their lessons and students to “spread the word of Christianity.” Bangor Christian Schools bases its lessons on a “Christian worldview and Christian philosophy of life.”
Both institutions “frankly admit that they discriminate against homosexuals, transgender people, and non-Christians,” according to the brief Maine filed to defend her program.
In the Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the program’s exemption for religious schools amounts to “discrimination against religion.”
The Chief Justice wrote the ruling with Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas supporting the decision. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that “Maine has promised every child within the state the right to a free public education,” extending the promise of a “religiously neutral education required in public school systems.”
But “while intended to protect against discrimination of one kind,” the court’s conservative majority ruling “requires Maine to fund what many of its citizens believe to be discrimination of another kind,” according to Judge Sotomayor.
The case and its verdict are generally similar to Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenuein which the court argued that the state violated the First Amendment by prohibiting government aid to support religious institutions.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote in that opinion that once a state decides to subsidize private education, it “cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
A statement from the American Civil Liberties Union said the decision in the Maine case “undermines our Constitution’s promise of separation of government and religion.”
The ruling comes as the Supreme Court nears the end of its term, with some of its most high-profile decisions expected in late June or early July, including the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that could determine the fate of abortion rights in the United States, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School Districtanother First Amendment case raising questions about the rights of government workers to the free exercise of religion versus constitutional protections against the imposition of religious views.
Reference-www.independent.co.uk