Maine Does An End Run Around the Supreme Court’s Decision Striking Down Law that Barred Tuition Assistance for Faith-Based Schools

Maine allowed families without access to a local government school to participate in a tuition assistance program to use public funds for approved private schools — as long as the money wasn’t used for religious teaching.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down this law in Carson v Makin (2022). The court contended that the law violated the Free Exercise Clause when it excluded students from the program who would otherwise qualify because they chose to attend religious schools.

But Maine enacted new laws that effectively kept the ban in place while the high court was hearing arguments in Carson. Did officials suspect they would lose?

Becket Law represents a family and a Catholic high school in a lawsuit challenging the state’s news laws. The plaintiffs allege that Maine is doing an “end run” around the high court’s ruling, effectively still discriminating agains religious schools.

And you won’t believe how the state is doing it (emphases added):

Maine’s new laws block schools that receive tuition funds from allowing any religious expression unless they allow every kind—meaning that a Catholic school like St. Dominic can’t have Mass unless it also allows a Baptist revival meeting. It also gives the state’s Human Rights Commission—not parents and schools—the final word on how the school teaches students to live out Catholic beliefs regarding marriage, gender, and family life.

The legislature tried to be too clever by half. Under this scenario, a Baptist school that provides religious services also must allow the Muslim call to prayer to qualify under the tuition assistance program. And an anti-Christian, unelected organization gets to make decisions for religious schools?

Such laws are contrary to the spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision. And lawmakers know it.

“Maine lawmakers boasted about changing the law to avoid the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson,” Adèle Auxier Keim, senior counsel at Becket, said. “That’s illegal and unfair. We are confident that Maine’s new laws will be struck down just like their old ones were.”

Photo credit: By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, link

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