The case of Carson v. Makin, in which the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, concerns an unusual school voucher program with about 5,000 students in parts of Maine so rural that there are no public high schools. But the consequences of the decision are likely to be broader, offering more legal support for religious institutions, including schools, seeking public funds. Show Two Maine families had sued after the state said they could not use public tuition assistance to send their teenagers to Christian schools. The high court ruled in their favor, telling Maine it could not exclude religious institutions from the program because it was discriminatory, violating the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause. Despite its limited impact, the decision marks a victory for proponents of school privatization and school choice. In the last year, they have successfully lobbied state lawmakers to create or expand programs that send taxpayer dollars to private schools. These come in a variety of forms — and put taxpayer dollars directly in the hands of parents, who can choose what kind of education they want for their children. “This ruling affirms that parents should be able to choose a school that is compatible with their values or that honor and respect their values,” Leslie Hiner, vice president of legal affairs for EdChoice, said in a statement. “By shutting out parents with certain values, that’s discrimination run rampant.” “Faith-based are really critical to their success because they have a very proven track record of educating disadvantaged kids.” Legal scholars and advocates say the case itself will have little immediate impact, but they worried the case signals that the court will continue to open the door for religious institutions, including schools, to access public funds. “Overall this is a deeply disappointing decision that further erodes the separation of church and state,” said Daniel Mach, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union’s program on freedom of religion and belief. The decision follows a string of rulings that have favored religious institutions seeking public dollars. Two decades ago, the court ruled that tuition voucher programs could be used to help students attend religious schools, partly because it was the parent, not the state, making the decision to send them there. Then, in 2017, the court ruled in favor of Trinity Lutheran Church, which sought a state grant from Missouri to repave the playground at its day care. And last year, the court sided with parents in Montana who wanted to use the state’s tuition voucher program to send their children to Christian schools. Public school advocates worry that funding for school choice programs cuts in to budgets for traditional public schools. “If this means that states will now be encouraged to put into place voucher schemes, then that could be a challenge in the future, and the issue of course would be the price tag for voucher schemes,” said Francisco Negron of the National School Boards Association. There are also concerns over whether the civil rights laws that apply to public schools extend to private schools that receive public funds. In the Maine case, for example, one of the Christian schools bars gay and transgender students and teachers, a practice that would violate federal law if enacted in a public school. Legal scholars anticipate that, at some point, the court will have to decide whether religious charter schools are permissible. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed, including by religious organizations that deliver nonsectarian instruction during the day but provide religious after-school programs. Courts continue to grapple with whether charter schools are truly public schools and subject to the same civil rights laws, which would preclude the creation of religious charter schools. A recent ruling spoke to that question: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit recently held that a charter school’s gender-based dress code, requiring girls to wear skirts, was unconstitutional — just as it would have been at a mainstream public school. In the 2017 Trinity Lutheran case about religious schools that score state funds, Justice Sonia Sotomayor had worried that the majority was leading Americans “to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.” On Tuesday, in a lone dissent, she wrote that now “the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. journal article School Voucher Plans: Are They Legal?Journal of Education Finance Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2000) , pp. 1-21 (21 pages) Published By: University of Illinois Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/40704110 This is a preview. Log in to get access Journal Information The Journal of Education Finance is recognized as one of the leading journals in the field of funding public schools. Each issue brings original research and analysis on issues such as education reform, judicial intervention in finance, school/social agency linkages, tax limitation measures, and factors influencing teacher salaries. Publisher Information The University of Illinois Press is one of the leading publishers of humanities and social sciences journals in the country. Founded in 1918, the Press publishes more than 40 journals representing 18 societies, along with more than 100 new books annually. Our publication program covers a wide range of disciplines including psychology, philosophy, Black studies, women's studies, cultural studies, music, immigration, and more. Current issues are available through the Scholarly Publishing Collective. The Press is a founding member of the Association of University Presses. Rights & Usage This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. Why are school vouchers unconstitutional?First Amendment concerns of school vouchers center on separation of church and state. Another criticism of vouchers was that the inclusion of parochial schools in voucher programs would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment by diverting public money to private religious schools. In Lemon v.
Does the Constitution allow for states to provide educational vouchers to be used at sectarian schools?Nothing in the U.S. Constitution or the state constitutions prohibits this highly popular school reform—as the current Supreme Court might soon agree.
Why are vouchers unconstitutional?That's because California's constitution (Article IX, Paragraph 9) prohibits spending any public funds “for support of any sectarian or denominational school,” or on “any school not under the exclusive control of the officers of the public schools.”
Does the voucher program violate the establishment clause?Providing funding to religious schools violates the principles of the First Amendment's establishment clause as set out in historical documents of the Founding Fathers and Supreme Court jurisprudence, such as Everson v. Board of Education (1947).
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Are voucher systems that allow public funds to flow to religious schools lawful?
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