Maine Scholarship Program Excluding Sectarian Schools Unconstitutional
In Carson v. Makin, 142 S.Ct. 1987 (2022), the U.S. Supreme Court struck a tuition assistance program that requires school districts to transmit payment to the secondary school — public or private, in-state or out-of-state — that parents would like their child to attend as long as the school is nonsectarian. Maine is the most rural state in the union. Not all school districts operate a public secondary school, so the legislature responded with this financial aid program. In administering the program, Maine considered a "sectarian school to be one that is associated with a particular faith or belief system and which, in addition to teaching academic subjects, promotes the faith or belief system with which it is associated and/or presents the material taught through the lens of this faith." According to the court, "The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools – so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion." Maine and the First Circuit argued that Maine's limitation was a permissible "use" based limitation on public funds, rather than an exclusion based on the school's religious status. The majority disagreed there was any distinction between the two. The court also rejected "play in the joints" between the religion clauses as grounds to allow Maine to enforce a stricter separation of church and state in tension with the...
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