Their Day in Court

When the US Supreme Court last week ruled that the state of Maine violated the First Amendment to the Constitution when it refused to make public funding available for students to attend religious schools, it continued a trend that’s now nearly two decades in the making.

Maine is sparsely populated, with less than a million and a half residents spread across a state that includes a county that’s bigger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. As a result, many school districts don’t have enough kids to support a middle or high school. The state of Maine, however, required those rural school districts to arrange for their young residents’ educations, either by sending them to other public or private schools that the district designates, or paying tuition to the school each student selects, as long as the school is nonsectarian.

The opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts in the case, Carson v. Makin, held that although state and local governments are not required to subsidize private schools at all, if they choose to do so they cannot exclude religious schools. The First Amendment’s religion clause contains two parts: one prohibits governmental “establishment” of religion, while the other proscribes governmental action that serves to inhibit the “free exercise” of religion.

Chief Justice Roberts addressed both of these principles, writing that a neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizations through the choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause.