U.S. Supreme Court Endorses Taxpayer Funds for Religious Schools

[Daniel2]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet (if so, please delete this thread), but the Supreme Court just issued a big win for religious freedom:

Quote

 

U.S. Supreme Court endorses taxpayer funds for religious schools

Andrew Chung, Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the separation of church and state in a major ruling on Tuesday by endorsing Montana tax credits that helped pay for students to attend religious schools, a decision paving the way for more public funding of faith-based institutions.

The 5-4 decision, with the conservative justices in the majority and the liberal justices dissenting, was a boost to conservative Christian activists who have fought for years to make state taxpayer funds available for children to attend religious schools in the form of contentious voucher programs.

The ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, represented the court’s latest expansion of religious liberties. The court backed a Montana program that gave tax incentives for people to donate to a scholarship fund that provided money to Christian schools for student tuition expenses.

President Donald Trump’s administration supported the Montana parents. His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is a prominent supporter of such “school choice” plans benefiting private and religious schools rather than secular public schools. Christian conservatives are an important voter bloc for Trump, seeking re-election on Nov. 3.

“This decision represents a turning point in the sad and static history of American education, and it will spark a new beginning of education that focuses first on students and their needs,” DeVos said.

The court sided with three mothers of Christian school students who appealed after Montana’s top court invalidated the tax credit for violating the state constitution’s ban on public aid to churches and religious entities.

The justices faulted the Montana Supreme Court for voiding a taxpayer program merely because it can be used to fund religious entities, saying such action violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protection for the free exercise of religion.

“A state need not subsidize private education,” Roberts wrote. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

In the case, free exercise of religion was pitted against another element of the First Amendment - the separation of church and state that prohibits governmental establishment of an official religion or favoring one religion over another.

STATE CONSTITUTIONS

Thirty-eight states have constitutional provisions like Montana’s. The ruling paves the way for some of those states including Missouri, Idaho and South Dakota to lift restrictions on funding for religious schools and could affect separate bans in Maine and Vermont, said Tim Keller, a lawyer at the Institute for Justice, which represented the Montana mothers.

“Today’s victory means that their state legislatures are now free to enact educational choice programs that permit families to choose both religious and nonreligious educational options,” Keller added.

The National Education Association, a union representing public school teachers, said the ruling could undermine public schools because vital education funding could be siphoned to religious schools.

Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the association’s president, said “an extreme Supreme Court just joined the far-right effort to undermine one of our country’s most cherished democratic institutions: public education.”

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said in dissent that the ruling risks “entanglement and conflict” over where to draw the line between allowing free exercise of religion while protecting against government endorsement of religion.

The decision followed the Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling that churches and other religious entities cannot be flatly denied public money even in states with constitutions explicitly banning such funding.

The Montana tax credit program, created in 2015, provided up to $150 as an incentive for donations to groups that fund scholarships for tuition to private schools including religious schools. In practice, most of the money went to Christian schools. The one such scholarship organization currently operating provides $500 payments to schools, primarily to help lower-income students attend.

The dispute began when Montana tax officials limited the program to non-religious schools to comport with the state constitution’s prohibition on “direct or indirect” public aid to any church religious educational entity.

Lead plaintiff Kendra Espinoza and two other mothers of students at Stillwater Christian School in Kalispell, Montana sued, saying the exclusion violated their religious rights. The top state court struck down the program in 2018.

 

 

Edited June 30, 2020 by Daniel2

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Not sure if this is a great idea, anytime (or if)  taxpayer money is used to support anything to do with religion, it usually comes with strings attached. So, if I am reading this correctly, it might not be a the best thing. 
 

ETA: I don’t know why Christian Conservatives would want this, as it could open the doors to many things they might oppose, including our own Church. I am a strong believer of the separation of “Church and State”. The “State” does not belong in the affairs of the Church. 

Edited June 30, 2020 by Bill “Papa” Lee

[bsjkki]

24 minutes ago, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

Not sure if this is a great idea, anytime (or if)  taxpayer money is used to support anything to do with religion, it usually comes with strings attached. So, if I am reading this correctly, it might not be a the best thing. 

This is a good thing. States can no longer discriminate against religious private schools. It promotes school choice.

Alito's concurring opinion has a lot of history of anti-Catholic bias. He concludes this way.

Ooops... this is from Gorsuch. Individuals are forced only to choose between forgoing state aid or pursuing some as-pect of their faith. The government does not put a gun to the head, only a thumb on the scale. But, as so many of our cases explain, the Free Exercise Clause doesn’t easily toler-ate either; any discrimination against religious exercise must meet the demands of strict scrutiny. In this way, the Clause seeks to ensure that religion remains “a matter of voluntary choice by individuals and their associations, [where] each sect ‘flourish[es] according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma,’” influenced by nei-ther where the government points its gun nor where it places its thumb. McDaniel, 435 U. S., at 640 (opinion of Brennan J.) (quoting Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 313 (1952)).

8 ESPINOZA v. MONTANA DEPT. OF REVENUE GORSUCH, J., concurring Montana’s Supreme Court disregarded these founda-tional principles. Effectively, the court told the state legis-lature and parents of Montana like Ms. Espinoza: You can have school choice, but if anyone dares to choose to send a child to an accredited religious school, the program will be shuttered. That condition on a public benefit discriminates against the free exercise of religion. Calling it discrimina-tion on the basis of religious status or religious activity makes no difference: It is unconstitutional all the same.

This is Alito... Today’s public schools are quite different from those en-visioned by Horace Mann, but many parents of many differ-ent faiths still believe that their local schools inculcate a worldview that is antithetical to what they teach at home .Many have turned to religious schools, at considerable ex-pense, or have undertaken the burden of homeschooling. The tax-credit program adopted by the Montana Legisla- ture but overturned by the Montana Supreme Court pro-vided necessary aid for parents who pay taxes to support the public schools but who disagree with the teaching there. The program helped parents of modest means do what more affluent parents can do: send their children to a school of their choice. The argument that the decision below treats everyone the same is reminiscent of Anatole France’s sar-donic remark that “‘[t]he law, in its majestic equality, for-bids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’” J. Cournos, A Mod-ern Plutarch 35 (1928).

Edited June 30, 2020 by bsjkki

[HappyJackWagon]

21 minutes ago, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

Not sure if this is a great idea, anytime (or if)  taxpayer money is used to support anything to do with religion, it usually comes with strings attached. So, if I am reading this correctly, it might not be a the best thing. 
 

ETA: I don’t know why Christian Conservatives would want this, as it could open the doors to many things they might oppose, including our own Church. I am a strong believer of the separation of “Church and State”. The “State” does not belong in the affairs of the Church. 

I would generally agree but I feel things get very murky once money gets involved. If the State is going to give tax credits or exemption etc to religion, it would seem reasonable to expect the religion to follow the same government rules as everyone else.

 

20 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

This is a good thing. States can no longer discriminate against religious private schools. It promotes school choice.

It really is an interesting thing how an issue like this can be both right and wrong. School choice is great, but when money is attached, so are strings, and rightfully so. If a religion wants to be free from government infringement it should keep itself free of government benefits.

[bsjkki]

7 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I would generally agree but I feel things get very murky once money gets involved. If the State is going to give tax credits or exemption etc to religion, it would seem reasonable to expect the religion to follow the same government rules as everyone else.

 

It really is an interesting thing how an issue like this can be both right and wrong. School choice is great, but when money is attached, so are strings, and rightfully so. If a religion wants to be free from government infringement it should keep itself free of government benefits.

We shall see if the strings attached to the money cause a problem. The fact that the religious schools were banned outright from receiving these funds is the issue. Plus, I think the money is somewhat like a grant given to the child who then chooses their school. Somewhat like a Pell Grant. I foresee a day where BYU may have to forego accepting Pell Grants in the future for the same 'strings attached' issues.

[strappinglad]

So if the State is going to discriminate , it must discriminate against everybody or nobody. 

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, bsjkki said:

We shall see if the strings attached to the money cause a problem. The fact that the religious schools were banned outright from receiving these funds is the issue. Plus, I think the money is somewhat like a grant given to the child who then chooses their school. Somewhat like a Pell Grant. I foresee a day where BYU may have to forego accepting Pell Grants in the future for the same 'strings attached' issues.

Indeed, such a day is likely near at hand. I'll be interested to see what affect that has on BYU's size and/or prestige. Small Christian/Western traditionalist schools such as Saint Andrew's and Hillsdale College already reject government funding, but they are very small operations. More prominent religiously-affiliated schools, like BYU, Boston College, Catholic University of America, and Liberty University, still by and large take federal aid, and it's hard to imagine any of them retaining their stature without it. 

[Robert F. Smith]

Never mind

Edited July 1, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[Amulek]

18 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

It really is an interesting thing how an issue like this can be both right and wrong. School choice is great, but when money is attached, so are strings, and rightfully so. If a religion wants to be free from government infringement it should keep itself free of government benefits.

Quite so. The state's funding of education necessarily requires some sort of criteria for determining which subjects have to be taught in order to qualify for said funding. Otherwise, the state would end up subsidizing attendance at institutions that only teach material completely irrelevant to the state's educational objectives. I mean, nobody would expect the state to subsidize a private school whose primary educational objective was teaching how to repair rotary telephones or dial-up modems. 

But there is a difference between a state imposing neutral curricular requirements in a scholarship / grant program and a state which categorically bars participation in those programs from religious schools. 

I suspect that's where the battle will shift towards next: determining what constitutes neutral curricular requirements. 

   

[Scott Lloyd]

20 hours ago, Daniel2 said:

I haven't seen this mentioned yet (if so, please delete this thread), but the Supreme Court just issued a big win for religious freedom:

 

The main issue aside, I have a beef with the writer of this story, who led with this paragraph: 

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the separation of church and state in a major ruling on Tuesday by endorsing Montana tax credits that helped pay for students to attend religious schools, a decision paving the way for more public funding of faith-based institutions.“

Speaking as a (retired) journalist, I see here a blatant bias on the part of a reporter who might be so steeped in his prejudices he doesn’t even realize he is doing it. It borders on editorialization in what purports to be an objective news story. In the old-school form of journalism I was brought up on, that amounts to journalistic malpractice. Were I an instructor in a journalism class and this were submitted to me as an assignment, I would mark it down severely. 
 

Suppose the lead paragraph used this phrasing: 

The U.S. Supreme Court struck a blow for religious liberty in a major ruling on Tuesday. ...

That would be more in line with my own sympathies, but from a professional standpoint I would be equally as critical of it as showing blatant bias. 
 

In the current climate, we need to be conscious of how and when journalists are manipulative in their product, and they should be called out for it. 

[Islander]

22 hours ago, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

Not sure if this is a great idea, anytime (or if)  taxpayer money is used to support anything to do with religion, it usually comes with strings attached. So, if I am reading this correctly, it might not be a the best thing. 
 

ETA: I don’t know why Christian Conservatives would want this, as it could open the doors to many things they might oppose, including our own Church. I am a strong believer of the separation of “Church and State”. The “State” does not belong in the affairs of the Church. 

Your concerns are noted, brother. However, the Court was right in pointing to the fact that the State does not have to fund private education. But once it decided that it will (in the case of secular charter schools) it can not discriminate between them just because they have a religious aspect. 

[JamesBYoung]

Watch the liberals push for a blue sweep this fall for the WH, Senate, and House.

If accomplished and filled by libbies, the Court will be increased by six seats, and a series of cases will begin, among others, to reverse this decision.

I, for one, believe in absolute separation of church and state, and I would prefer that religious organizations pay taxes on income.

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, JamesBYoung said:

Watch the liberals push for a blue sweep this fall for the WH, Senate, and House.

If accomplished and filled by libbies, the Court will be increased by six seats, and a series of cases will begin, among others, to reverse this decision.

I, for one, believe in absolute separation of church and state, and I would prefer that religious organizations pay taxes on income.

The phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution. What is referenced by this are the free-exercise and establishment clauses in the First Amendment.

Making churches subject to taxation would open them up to oppression by governments based on political whim. Where’s the protection from abridgment of the free-exercise of religion in that?