SCOTUS Rules in Favor of Religious Freedom and School Choice

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Carson v. Makin, a case that challenges a Maine law that discriminates against parents based on religion by providing some families with tuition support for the school of their choice but denying that same support to other families. The High Court held that the Maine program violates the Free Exercise Clause.

The High Court considered whether a 1982 Maine law violates the First Amendment by excluding religious schools from the state’s “tuitioning system,” which pays for students to attend private schools.

Three families from three different small towns in Maine sued the state over a program that bans families from an otherwise generally available student-aid program if they choose to send their children to schools that teach religion. They qualified for Maine’s Town Tuitioning Program in all other respects, but they are excluded from participating only because they chose religious schools for their children.

As a result, these families who want to send their children to Christian schools in Bangor and Waterville were denied in lower federal courts and then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Because many areas of the state are rural and sparsely populated, not all school districts run their own secondary schools. To help students in those districts attend secondary school, the state has paid for students to attend either another public school or a private school of their choice. However, since 1982, the state has only allowed tuition payments under the program to go to private schools that do not provide religious instruction.

SCOTUS Rules in Favor of Religious Freedom and School Choice - Liberty Counsel