SCOTUS are becoming a religious cabal!
Supreme Court appears likely to relax limits on public money for religious education
Two sets of parents are suing Maine over its policy of making tuition money available in areas that don’t have public high schools, but not for schools that promote sectarian beliefs.
By Pete Williams
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared likely to rule that state programs providing money to parents for their children's high school tuition cannot exclude schools offering religious education.
Such a ruling would loosen longstanding restrictions on using taxpayer money to pay for religious instruction, further lowering the wall of separation between church and state.
The justices heard 90 minutes of courtroom argument Wednesday involving a program in Maine that makes tuition money available to families living in areas without a public high school, which they can use pay for attendance at public or private schools in other communities.
But the money cannot be used to send children to sectarian schools, defined by the state as those that promote a particular faith or belief system and teach material "through the lens of this faith."
Several of the court's conservatives suggested they believed the state law is unconstitutional.
"The problem is that our case law suggests that discriminating against all religions, as compared to secular or comparable secular, is just as discriminatory as to exclude the Catholic and the Jewish and include the Protestant," said Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
"The parents are seeking equal treatment. They're saying, 'Don't discriminate against me because I'm religious,'" he said.
Maine originally did allow the money to be used for tuition at religious high schools but changed its policy after the state attorney general concluded that the program violated the Constitution's requirement of religious neutrality toward religion.
Justice Neil Gorsuch said that was "perhaps a mistaken view of the establishment clause" in the First Amendment.
The court's more liberal justices indicated their support for the current Maine program. Stephen Breyer said it's appropriate for governments to avoid having to referee religious disputes.
"We don't want to get into a situation where a state will pay for the teaching of religion," he said.
more:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-decide-whether-states-can-refuse-pay-religious-education-n1285559?cid=eml_nbn_20211208&user_email=d60e03639eee858a9d1f722503050fb5c4c275d9e0d473a7e1f6182e26eccb3c
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