Supreme Court Rules to Include Maine Religious Schools in Public Funding
The US Supreme Court found Maine’s resolution to exclude religious schools from public tuition “unconstitutional”.
Maine private schools still arrange public education for those students who live in the districts without public schools. As officials explain it, this policy makes children’s education rights equal, “promotes tolerance and acceptance,” and “teaches academic subjects in a religiously-neutral manner.”
The case received contradictory opinions even among justices in the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Maine’s demand for canceling public religious school funding “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,” he adds.
On the contrary, Justice Stephen Breyer mentioned that the Supreme Court justices don’t consider the beginning clauses of the First Amendment and proceed to the following provisions. “It sometimes allows a State to further antiestablishment interests by withholding aid from religious institutions without violating the Constitution’s protections for the free exercise of religion,” Breyer emphasizes. “In my view, Maine’s nonsectarian requirement falls squarely within the scope of that constitutional leeway.”
Other justices think that the church and the government should be separated and never be merged.
Image source: The Washington Post Twenty students filed a lawsuit against Oxford High School in Michigan, which refused to carry ou...
