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Nevilledog

(50,659 posts)
Tue Jun 21, 2022, 07:57 PM Jun 2022

The Supreme Court Just Forced Maine to Fund Religious Education. It Won't Stop There.



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Andrew L. Seidel
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"The conservative majority...has perfected the art of ignoring genuine discrimination while perceiving anti-Christian persecution where none exists. In the process, they are elevating the rights of one sect over all others." Please read @mjs_DC right now:

slate.com
The Supreme Court Just Forced Maine to Fund Religious Education. It Won’t Stop There.
Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion has the potential to dismantle secular public education in the United States.
4:47 PM · Jun 21, 2022


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/carson-makin-supreme-court-maine-religious-education.html

The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority effectively declared on Tuesday that the separation of church and state—a principle enshrined in the Constitution—is, itself, unconstitutional. Its 6–3 decision in Carson v. Makin requires Maine to give public money to private religious schools, steamrolling decades of precedent in a race to compel state funding of religion. Carson is radical enough on its own, but the implications of the ruling are even more frightening: As Justice Stephen Breyer noted in dissent, it has the potential to dismantle secular public education in the United States.

Carson challenges Maine’s effort to provide quality civic education to every child in the state. The government created a tuition assistance program to help families who live in remote, sparsely populated regions without any public schools. Under the program, parents can send their kids to certain private schools, and the state covers the cost of tuition. To qualify, these schools must give students a secular education. They may be affiliated with, or even run by, a religious organization. But their actual curricula must align with secular state standards.

Two families challenged this limitation, arguing that it violated the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. Just two decades ago, this claim would’ve been laughed out of court: SCOTUS only permitted states to subsidize religious schools in 2002; at the time, it would’ve been absurd to say that states have a constitutional obligation to subsidize them. Beginning in 2017, the court began to assert that states may not exclude religious schools from public benefits that are available to their secular counterparts. And in 2020, the conservative justices forced states to subsidize religious schools once they began subsidizing secular private education.

Tuesday’s decision in Carson takes this radical theory to a new extreme, ordering Maine to extend public education funds to religious indoctrination.

The upshot of Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion for the court is that states have no compelling interest in providing public, secular education to children. Indeed, Roberts suggests that the very concept of secular schooling is a smokescreen for “discrimination against religion”—a pretext for unconstitutional animus toward pious Americans. His opinion reaches far beyond Maine. About 37 states have amendments to their constitutions that bar government funding of religious institutions, including schools. Carson essentially invalidates those laws while undermining the broader constitutional basis for the nation’s public school system.

*snip*

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The Supreme Court Just Forced Maine to Fund Religious Education. It Won't Stop There. (Original Post) Nevilledog Jun 2022 OP
If we, the public, have to fund them randr Jun 2022 #1
Tax them on what? Zeitghost Jun 2022 #3
Parents of the kids pay property taxes jimfields33 Jun 2022 #4
I don't think we tax private schools though, do we? Dr. Strange Jun 2022 #5
I'm establishing the Pastafarian Academy of Progressive Tolerance this fall. Are there forms Atticus Jun 2022 #2

Atticus

(15,124 posts)
2. I'm establishing the Pastafarian Academy of Progressive Tolerance this fall. Are there forms
Tue Jun 21, 2022, 08:05 PM
Jun 2022

to fill out or do I just phone the state capitol?

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