In early September, the case of Espinoza v. MontanaDepartment of Revenue was brought to the Montana Supreme Court. The issue
in this case was a voucher-type program that Montana designed to divert government
dollars to private schools. This program was enacted in 2015 and allows
taxpayers to receive tax credits for donations to Student Scholarship
Organizations (SSO). This tax credits were received on an equal dollar-to-dollar
basis. This means that if a taxpayer owes the state, they can send the money
directly to an SSO and not have to pay the state. The SSO awards scholarships
to students attending private elementary and secondary schools. However, this
program brought up the big issue of separation of church and state because the
SSO supported 13 private schools, and 12 of those private schools were
religiously affiliated. Over 94 percent of the scholarships given were to students
attending religiously affiliated schools. This funding was giving indirect aid
to furthering religious education, especially with such little of the SSO money
going to secular private schools.
This
program was brought to the supreme court because it directly violates Montana’s
Constitution. Montana’s Constitution includes extra protections against government-funded
religious practices to avoid excessive entanglement. The state adopted a “no-aid
provision” in order to promote the separation of church and state and to ensure
that enough taxpayer money would go towards the public-school program. Montana
also explicitly prohibits any “direct or indirect” aid to religious education
from government money.
The case
was brought to Montana’s Supreme Court where they ruled the SSO program to be unconstitutional
because of the no-aid provision within the constitution. However, parents with
children that received scholarships from SSO to attend the religious private
school included in the program claimed that getting rid of the program was a
form of unconstitutional discrimination against them by excluding religious
schools from the tax-credit program. Excluding only religious schools from the
program would be neutral among all religions, however, it would not be neutral between
religious and non-religious schools. Montana’s Supreme Court realized that the
program conflicted with the state’s constitution and could cause neutrality problems
by limiting the funding to only secular private schools, so justices struck down
the program in its entirety.
The facts
of this case are somewhat similar to those of Everson v. Board of Education
of Ewing Township, decided in 1947. Everson brought the Boards of Education
of Ewing Township to court because he was upset that his tax dollars were going
towards reimbursing parents for the cost of driving their students to and from
private schools. Similarly to Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue,
96 percent of the private schools benefitting from the reimbursement were
parochial Catholic schools. Everson claimed that this reimbursement violated
the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by providing indirect aid to
religion. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor the Board of Education in this
case, unlike the case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. I
think I agree more with the decision of Espinoza v. Montana Department of
Revenue because I believe that both programs, in fact, violated the US Establishment
Clause. I also believe that it is neutral among religion and non-religion to
not provide tax-payer funding to private schools because that money already
goes to fund public schools. Public school is available to everyone; parents
make the decision to take their children to a private school, whether it is
religious or not, so they should be willing to take on the burden of doing so.
Monday, November 4, 2019
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4 comments:
I agree with Holly that this is an issue of establishment. I respect the want to send children to private school and I think the idea of the Montana Student Scholarship Organizations is note-able, however, the issue is that Montana is diverting state money to support religious education. To me, this crosses a line because it is funding the school and religious education overall, not merely trying to provide textbooks, transportation etc. equally to all students.
I agree with the author and the comment above. Given there is the alternative of public school, I think providing money for the use of private religious schools is unconstitutional. The funds that are going to the private schools are not available to everyone, and constitute an indirect aid to religion, which is a problem given there are alternatives. Additionally, providing state money to a private institution always sets a bad precedent (if they gave it to an atheist school, one might argue it is privileging non-religion, if it only goes to certain religions, one might argue it is privileging certain religions over others, etc.).
Taking an accommodationist approach, the mere indirect aid religion got, in this case, would be constitutional. My issue aligns when nonreligious private schools receive funding while other religious private schools do not receive funding merely because they are religious. that is hostility towards religion. In order for true neutrality, all private schools (including religious private schools) or no private schools should be receiving public aid.
I think that this is an unconstitutional establishment of religion because of the tax aid given to the religious schools and the lack of neutrality between religion and nonreligion. I think the problem with the tax aid is that religious schooling tends to be a large part of many religious institutions, so giving aid to the schools is like giving aid to the religious institutions themselves. In addition to the tax aid, this policy is also not neutral between religion and nonreligion because the very vast majority of the schools receiving tax aid in the form of scholarships are religiously affiliated. Also, depending on the religious institutions represented, there might not be neutrality between religions either.
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