Religious schools may not be eligible for state tuition programs after all, if they choose to discriminate.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Maine isn’t allowed to exclude religious schools from a state voucher program that provides tuition to students who don’t live in towns with public schools. That ruling came from a lawsuit by three families wanting state money to send their children to two Christian schools; Temple Academy and Bangor Christian School. The ruling has made people nationwide worry about an erosion of the separation of church and state, since it is a way to funnel taxpayer money into church coffers.
But the two religious schools named in the lawsuit may not be eligible for the vouchers after all, according to the Maine state attorney general Aaron Frey. Both schools have policies that discriminate against LGBT students and staff and discriminate based on religion, which would disqualify any school from participation in the tuition program.
“The education provided by the schools at issue here is inimical to a public education. They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff,” Frey said in a statement.
With the Supreme Court in the state it is in, there’s no guarantee that this new obstacle will hold, but it does open the matter up to a great deal of further litigation, as it should. Forcing taxpayers to fund religious schools is a violation of every individual’s freedom of religion. But certain people disagree.
“It was an erroneous opinion of the Maine attorney general that embroiled the state in five lawsuits spanning three decades and that culminated in the Supreme Court’s ruling against the state,” said Michael Bindas, attorney for the families, said Thursday in a statement blaming Frey’s office for the entire issue. “The current attorney general seems to not have learned any lessons from that experience.”
Photo: Jana Shea / Shutterstock
