Supreme Court rules for parents seeking state aid for religious schools [Breaking]
The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended its support for religious schools, ruling that parents who send their children to these institutions have a right to tuition aid if the state provides it to other similar private schools.from Maine could open the door to including religious schools among the charter schools that are privately run but publicly financed.
Maine has an unusual subsidy program because many of its small towns do not have a public high school. In such cases, students may enroll in a private school and the state pays their tuition.Since 1980, however, the state has not extended these subsidies to students in church schools, apparently fearing it would be unconstitutional to do so.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that discrimination based on religion “was odious to our Constitution and could not stand.
“This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “This court should not have started down this path five years ago. ... Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation,” she said, closing her dissent “with growing concern for where this court will lead us next.
“It was an open secret that ‘sectarian’ was code for ‘Catholic,’” Roberts Jr. wrote in 2020, describing the common state laws that prohibit sending tax money to schools affiliated with a church. These restrictions were “born of bigotry” and “arose at a time of pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general,” heJustices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch have said they would go further and uphold laws or policies that favor religion.
“The court said again no state may set up a program of private school choice and exclude funding for faith-based schools,” said Nicole Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor.
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