Journalistic backgrounding: Thinly-populated Maine gives an uncommon context for this story as a result of the vast majority of its 260 college districts don’t function full Okay-12 techniques and as a substitute pay tuition for public or non-public colleges that households select for higher grades. Religiously-affiliated colleges are included, however not if Maine deems them “sectarian.”
Notably, the mother and father’ plea for tuition is backed by main establishments of the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Conference and different evangelical Protestants, the Church of God in Christ (the nation’s largest African-American denomination), Latter-day Saints (previously referred to as “Mormons”) and Orthodox Judaism, alongside the 63-campus Council of Islamic Colleges. A reporter’s query: Has such a non secular coalition ever shaped in any prior Supreme Courtroom case?
Of additional curiosity, the case engages a significant religious-liberty theorist, Michael W. McConnell, director of Stanford College’s Constitutional Regulation Middle and former federal decide on the tenth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals. He wrote that circuit’s 2008 opinion in Colorado Christian College v Weaver (.pdf right here), which tossed out a regulation that barred “pervasively sectarian” faculties from a state scholarship program.
In Carson, McConnell filed a private transient September 8 that arms the Supreme Courtroom a historical past lesson (.pdf right here) on non secular freedom as conceived when the Structure’s First Modification was framed. He has explored this floor since a big Harvard Regulation Overview article in 1989.
In Espinoza v. Montana, the Supreme Courtroom final 12 months (.pdf right here) dominated towards a provision in that state’s tax-credit plan for donations to a scholarship fund that refused support for religiously affiliated colleges. With Carson, McConnell offers with technicalities but in addition contends that underneath the First Modification authorities can’t determine “what sort of non secular use is too non secular” or favor one non secular outlook over one other.
Maine refused tuition for the conservative, Bible-based Bangor Christian College and the Temple Academy in Waterville, and but permitted the Cardigan Mountain College in New Hampshire, which holds “non-sectarian” weekly chapel companies and teaches “common ethical and non secular values.” To McConnell, Maine is clearly selecting sides in its help of competing non secular philosophies.
Cardigan entails a you-can’t-make-it-up angle. One in every of its 2017 graduates is the son of Chief Justice John Roberts. One other alumni dad of curiosity is Cardigan’s board chairman David Gregory, the newsman and creator of “How’s Your Religion?” (2015), which depicts his interfaith upbringing and Jewish maturity married to a Christian spouse.
Contacts for journalists:
For Wehle: publicist Christine Stutz at 410-837-5648 or cell 410-961-6467. Maine’s funding restriction can also be championed by Rachel Laser at Individuals United for Separation of Church and State, 202-466-3234 or media@au.org.
For McConnell: communications@regulation.stanford.edu or 650-724-4666. Others siding with the mother and father’ enchantment embrace distinguished church-and-state scholar Douglas Laycock of the College of Virginia Regulation College at 512-656-1789 or dlaycock@regulation.virginia.edu, and Kimberlee Colby of the Christian Authorized Society at 703-894-12087 or kcolby@clsnet.org.
One further observe. Colleges are a sizzling political challenge simply now, so writers should not miss a outstanding [paywalled] article in final weekend’s Wall Avenue Journal by Philip Hamburger, a First Modification specialist at Columbia Regulation College. He says dissenting mother and father face the “insufferable” state of affairs of public colleges that present their youngsters free educations, however with “political bias, hostility towards faith, and now even sexual and racial indoctrination.” He finds this “profoundly unconstitutional.” Reactions? Hamburger contacts: hamburger@regulation.columbia.edu or 212-854-6001.
FIRST IMAGE: Illustration posted with a Pleasant Atheist weblog put up opposing public funding for non secular colleges.