{"id":8553,"date":"2022-08-08T13:06:38","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T13:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8553"},"modified":"2022-08-08T13:06:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T13:06:38","slug":"the-supreme-court-tears-a-new-hole-in-the-wall-separating-church-and-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8553","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court tears a new hole in the wall separating church and state"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The specific program at issue in Carson<\/em> is unusual to Maine. About 5,000 students in Maine\u2019s most rural areas, where it is not cost-efficient for the state to operate a public school, receive tuition vouchers that can be used to pay for private education. Maine law provides that these vouchers may only be used at \u201cnonsectarian\u201d schools, not religious ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carson<\/em> struck down this law excluding religious schools from the Maine voucher program, and that decision could have broad implications far beyond the few thousand students in Maine who benefit from these tuition subsidies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that long ago, the Court required the government to remain neutral on questions of religion<\/a> \u2014 a requirement that flowed from the First Amendment\u2019s command that the government \u201cshall make no law respecting an establishment of religion<\/a>.\u201d In practice, that meant that the government could neither impose burdens on religious institutions that it didn\u2019t impose on others, nor could it actively subsidize religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carson<\/em> turns this neutrality rule on its head, holding that government benefit programs that exclude religious institutions engage in \u201cdiscrimination against religion\u201d that violates the Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, however, Carson<\/em> also contains significant language confining the scope of this new rule. If the government cannot create benefit programs that exclude religion, then under the most extreme version of this argument, it is unclear why traditional public schools \u2014 which provide secular but not religious education \u2014 are constitutional. Secular public schools, after all, are government institutions that maintain neutrality toward religion. And, under the new rule announced in Carson<\/em>, neutrality is unconstitutional discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Chief Justice John Roberts\u2019s opinion in Carson<\/em> states explicitly that \u201cMaine may provide a strictly secular education in its public schools.\u201d And it reaffirms the Court\u2019s holding in a 2020 decision that \u201ca State need not subsidize private education<\/a>.\u201d That means that most students who receive a state-subsidized education will not be indoctrinated into a faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, one upshot of the Carson<\/em> decision is that Maine\u2019s taxpayers will be forced to pay for education that many of them will view as offensive. As the state explained in its brief<\/a>, the plaintiff families in this case want the state to pay at least part of the tuition at private schools that discriminate against LGBTQ teachers and students. One of these schools allegedly requires teachers to agree that \u201cthe Bible says that \u2018God recognize[s] homosexuals and other deviants as perverted\u2019\u201d and that \u201c[s]uch deviation from Scriptural standards is grounds for termination.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Tuesday\u2019s decision, these families are all but certain to get their wish \u2014 Maine would have to significantly rework its education policies to avoid such an outcome \u2014 and Maine\u2019s taxpayers will soon have to fund education at schools with outlandish or even bigoted worldviews.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2022\/6\/21\/23176893\/supreme-court-carson-makin-religion-schools-vouchers-chief-justice-roberts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The specific program at issue in Carson is unusual to Maine. About 5,000 students in Maine\u2019s most rural areas, where it is not cost-efficient for the state to operate a public school, receive tuition vouchers that can be used to pay for private education. Maine law provides that these vouchers may only be used at \u201cnonsectarian\u201d schools, not religious ones.<\/p>\n

Carson struck down this law excluding religious schools from the Maine voucher program, and that decision could have broad implications far beyond the few thousand students in Maine who benefit from these tuition subsidies.<\/p>\n

Not that long ago, the Court required the government to remain neutral on questions of religion \u2014 a requirement that flowed from the First Amendment\u2019s command that the government \u201cshall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.\u201d In practice, that meant that the government could neither impose burdens on religious institutions that it didn\u2019t impose on others, nor could it actively subsidize religion.<\/p>\n

Carson turns this neutrality rule on its head, holding that government benefit programs that exclude religious institutions engage in \u201cdiscrimination against religion\u201d that violates the Constitution.<\/p>\n

At the same time, however, Carson also contains significant language confining the scope of this new rule. If the government cannot create benefit programs that exclude religion, then under the most extreme version of this argument, it is unclear why traditional public schools \u2014 which provide secular but not religious education \u2014 are constitutional. Secular public schools, after all, are government institutions that maintain neutrality toward religion. And, under the new rule announced in Carson, neutrality is unconstitutional discrimination.<\/p>\n

But Chief Justice John Roberts\u2019s opinion in Carson states explicitly that \u201cMaine may provide a strictly secular education in its public schools.\u201d And it reaffirms the Court\u2019s holding in a 2020 decision that \u201ca State need not subsidize private education.\u201d That means that most students who receive a state-subsidized education will not be indoctrinated into a faith.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, one upshot of the Carson decision is that Maine\u2019s taxpayers will be forced to pay for education that many of them will view as offensive. As the state explained in its brief, the plaintiff families in this case want the state to pay at least part of the tuition at private schools that discriminate against LGBTQ teachers and students. One of these schools allegedly requires teachers to agree that \u201cthe Bible says that \u2018God recognize[s] homosexuals and other deviants as perverted\u2019\u201d and that \u201c[s]uch deviation from Scriptural standards is grounds for termination.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After Tuesday\u2019s decision, these families are all but certain to get their wish \u2014 Maine would have to significantly rework its education policies to avoid such an outcome \u2014 and Maine\u2019s taxpayers will soon have to fund education at schools with outlandish or even bigoted worldviews.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[670,429,1213,57,672,528],"class_list":["post-8553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-church-and-state","tag-constitution","tag-judiciary","tag-religion","tag-separation-of-church-and-state","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8554,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions\/8554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}