Supreme Court strikes down Maine tuition aid policy that barred religious schools

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a Maine education policy that made K-12 schools with religious instruction ineligible for taxpayer-backed tuition aid, continuing the conservative majority court’s general trend of ruling for religious interests.

The 6-3 decision broke along ideological lines, with the court’s six conservatives ruling that the state’s so-called sectarian exclusion violated constitutional religious protections. The court’s liberals dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor accusing the conservatives of further eroding church-state separation.

Maine law gives school-age children the right to free public education. But because many rural districts lack a public high school, a workaround was devised that allows students to attend nearby qualifying private schools with public assistance.

Under Maine law, however, schools that offer religious instruction had been ineligible. This exclusion prompted a challenge by Maine parents, who argued that barring families’ preferred schools from the tuition aid program based on religion violates constitutional religious rights under the First Amendment.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion siding with the parents.

A policy that excludes an organization from a widely available benefit solely because of its “religious character” must clear an extremely high legal bar to survive, he wrote. Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from its tuition aid program failed that test, Roberts concluded. 

“Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote for the majority. “Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”

The majority opinion Tuesday was consistent with the conservative justices’ largely favorable treatment of religious liberty claims in recent years.

The court’s three liberals wrote in dissent.

Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s most outspoken liberal, accused the court’s conservatives of eroding the barrier between church and state.

“This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” she wrote, adding, “[i]n just a few years, the Court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits States to decline to fund religious organizations to one that requires States in many circumstances to subsidize religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.”

Sotomayor also joined in part a separate dissent written by fellow liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, whose opinion was joined in full by Justice Elena Kagan, the court’s third liberal member.

Breyer, in dissent, wrote that Maine’s policy fell within a constitutionally permissible zone between the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing or favoring a religion, and its Free Exercise Clause, which protects religious belief and practice. 

“Maine wishes to provide children within the State with a secular, public education. This wish embodies, in significant part, the constitutional need to avoid spending public money to support what is essentially the teaching and practice of religion,” Breyer wrote.

“That need is reinforced by the fact that we are today a Nation of more than 330 million people who ascribe to over 100 different religions. In that context, state neutrality with respect to religion is particularly important,” he continued. “The Religion Clauses give Maine the right to honor that neutrality by choosing not to fund religious schools as part of its public school tuition program.”

Maine prevailed in the lower courts, prompting the parents’ ultimately successful appeal to the Supreme Court.

The conservative Christian public interest group First Liberty Institute, which represented two of the Maine parents who challenged the law, hailed Tuesday’s decision. 

“We are thrilled that the Court affirmed once again that religious discrimination will not be tolerated in this country,” said Kelly Shackelford, who heads First Liberty Institute. “Parents in Maine, and all over the country, can now choose the best education for their kids without fearing retribution from the government. This is a great day for religious liberty in America.” 

Updated at 12:53 p.m.