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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Supreme Court Just Forced Maine to Fund Religious Education. It Won't Stop There.
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Andrew L. Seidel
@AndrewLSeidel
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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 Wont 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
Andrew L. Seidel
@AndrewLSeidel
·
Follow
"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 Wont 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 Courts conservative supermajority effectively declared on Tuesday that the separation of church and statea principle enshrined in the Constitutionis, itself, unconstitutional. Its 63 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 Maines 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 Amendments free exercise clause. Just two decades ago, this claim wouldve been laughed out of court: SCOTUS only permitted states to subsidize religious schools in 2002; at the time, it wouldve 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.
Tuesdays 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 religiona 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 nations public school system.
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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
randr
(12,408 posts)1. If we, the public, have to fund them
We, the public, should have the right to tax them.
Zeitghost
(3,796 posts)3. Tax them on what?
We tax organizations on profit, something that non-profits do not have.
jimfields33
(15,450 posts)4. Parents of the kids pay property taxes
Im sure thats why they approved this.
Dr. Strange
(25,898 posts)5. I don't think we tax private schools though, do we?
Atticus
(15,124 posts)2. I'm establishing the Pastafarian Academy of Progressive Tolerance this fall. Are there forms
to fill out or do I just phone the state capitol?