Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue

[rlvaughn]

The Montana Department of Revenue wishes to shut down the state’s tuition tax credit program for private schools, citing Montana’s Blaine Amendment, because the program allows taxpayers to use the tax credit for both religious and nonreligious school tuition.

Montana program allowing parents, students to choose religious school should be upheld

The friend-of-the-court brief explains that the Montana Legislature designed its tax credit program to ensure the state would give equal treatment to religious and nonreligious schools. The program allowed parents to claim a tax deduction for donations to scholarship programs benefiting secular and religious private schools, as well as donations to public schools. But the Montana Department of Revenue, responsible for implementing and administering the program, created a rule to exclude religious schools from the tax credit program, citing Montana’s Blaine Amendment—a state constitutional provision with a sordid history enacted in the 1800s. The Montana Supreme Court invalidated all tax credits for students seeking to attend a private school solely because the program didn’t exclude students who attended religiously affiliated schools. The court left in place the tax credit for donations to public schools.

Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue at ScotusBlog