In the state of Maine, a financial tuition assistance program for students to attend public or private schools within or beyond the state border, was implemented to ensure every student receives an education. However, schools labeled as “sectarian” by the state of Maine, were not approved to be part of this funding program. In 2018, three families filed a complaint against the state in a United States District Court, acting in opposition to the limits of this program. Such families believed the state of Maine should be held accountable for a violation of the First Amendment Right of the free exercise of religion.
The question being presented essentially is whether or not the state is outlawing students from participating in the financial assistance program due to their desire to study at a religiously instructed institution that is outside of the state’s program requirements. We must examine the case from both sides, one of which being the parents who feel their child’s education is being limited, while the other being that funding is not inclusive of state labeled sectarian institutions.
Since the mid to late 1800’s, state courts have drifted away from the perception of America being predominantly a Christian Nation. With this, a secular perspective of Church and State relations had been strived towards and soon acquired. This idea of disestablishment aimed to separate the church and the state by means of limiting national preference to a religion. The “No Preference” provisions solidified the objective to ensure religious homogeneity no longer fostered any predominant religion in the United States nor can the government dictate one religion for all people. When evaluating the Carson v. Makin case, it must be known why providing funding to sectarian or religious institutions was prohibited. Government regulation over public funding should not and does not include religion as a factor. Therefore, spending done by the state should not act against the objectives that the Framers deeply instilled in the Constitution. Before the birth of this case back in 2011, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago publicized a Press Release on the problems that public funding in religious sects has in accordance with the groundwork of the Constitution. She brings attention to the third provision of Article 6, section 29 which states “No public money or property shall be appropriated, applied, paid, or employed, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, sectarian institution, or system of religion. . . ." This can further be supported by the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the establishment of any religion by the government and ultimately projects the concept of neutrality. A very strong argument can be made that the inclusion of a public government-regulated funding program should not provide support to religious institutions, because it nearly further instills religion in a government-backed manner. It appears as though allocating public funding to sectarian schools would go against all efforts made to preserve neutrality and not congressionally bear or establish a religion. From this perspective, we can cross reference this argument to Shurtleff v. City of Boston, in which a private religious organization was denied access to fly a religiously motivated flag over the city of Boston. While this case is pending adjudication before the SCOTUS, previous efforts to display the flag were rejected as projecting the establishment of a religion by the state. Carson v. Makin arguably puts into question whether or not providing public funding to private religious institutions is an unconstitutional effort of religious establishment.
On the other hand, a certainly valid argument can be made against the state, as it can be a violation of the free exercise of religion. The problem is not only the issue of public government spending on religious sects, but also that the government is essentially dictating where a child can and can not go to school. The funding program is geared towards providing financial support for children to receive a free public education, primarily because this particular district does not possess a school system. Parents who wish to send their children to Christian instructed schools are being infringed upon the right to such religious education, because the program conflicts with the state’s Constitutional provision. An oral argument was made that the state of Maine has violated the children’s Constitutional right to attend religious schools with an otherwise generally available financial aid program.
Now that both sides of the argument have been explored… Do you think the state of Maine is infringing upon the children’s rights to religious expression and practice?
Constitutional Interpretation of Public Funds & Religious Benefit
9 comments:
The writer is a very logical thinker, thorough and unprejudiced. She will make an excellent lawyer, if she chooses to be a lawyer as her profession. I'd hire her.
Carmine D.
Thank you for a well thought out post.
I can understand both sides of the argument. However, I tend to lean on the side of the parents for two reasons:
1. Not all "private" schools are obligated to teach students in a specific religion.
This would indicate that the state is discriminating against others - which is a
clear violation of the Constitution.
2. Excluding some students who are religious, could cause a division and make the
student feel inferior.
The state of Maine is making an unconstitutional effort of religious establishment. Convincing evidence toward this belief comes from Senator Santiago's statement that no public money shall be used to benefit any religious sect. Refusing to grant financial assistance to a school labeled as ‘sectarian’ is clearly discriminatory and would go against the Establishment Clause (neutrality). As Lena stated, it is unconstitutional to use religion as a determining factor for public funding.
A major aspect of the beginnings of disestablishment in the United States focused on education. The nation slowly began to prohibit religion based public education. I believe that Maine's tuition program is not in violation of the First Amendment. It does not prohibit Carson from exercising religion, but rather state funding toward religious education. It is not directed toward any one sect, but religion as a whole. Carson can utilize the tuition program for the child to attend a non-religious private or public institution. However, if the federal government allowed Maine to allocate funds to religious schools, it would be in conflict with the No Establishment Clause. Therefore, I feel that the court should rule in favor of Makin.
The state of Maine is constitutional in their exclusion of "sectarian" schools receiving state funding. This aligns with the belief that the government should not and cannot use their resources to promote any religion, as seen in the developing of the Lemon test in Lemon v. Kurtzman. The conditions are met as the law does not have a religious purpose - it is focused on ensuring education for students. It does not favor any religion, as all are treated equally. Finally, it seeks to not overly involve the government with religion, as its goal is to simply provide funding for education. When looking at the case from this example, and the many prior examples prohibiting religion in public schools, the courts are likely to rule on the side of Maine. Furthermore, because the district does not have their own public schools, and this policy is in place to replace that void, the argument of exclusion of religion in public schools is likely to further the state's argument.
I agree that it is unconstitutional to use religion as a determining factor, like Lena said. This completely goes against the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion. The acts here are prejudiced. I think Lena brings up good points on both sides, which helps us as readers have an unbiased opinion until the end of reading the post. This let me draw my own conclusion, which is that Maine clearly violated the Establishment Clause.
This is a really well-written take on an extremely relevant issue of religious establishment in schools today. After reading your article, I believe that Maine is constitutional in denying government funding to religious schools and also achieves religious neutrality in denying all religious sects equally. This is a timely read after learning about the Emerson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township case in 1947. In that case, the holding was that it was constitutional for the state of New Jersey to reimburse transportation fees for students going to private Catholic schools. Where that case allowed government interference in religious schools which incited the Establishment Clause, the key difference here is the families arguing that this is a violation of their Free Exercise of Religion. The state is not violating their free exercise since it does not take away their religious rights, and seeks a fair neutrality in religion.
I believe that the state of Maine did not violate the "Free Exercise clause" of the First Amendment based off of two main points, one that Lena mentioned, and one that I think should be considered. As Lena included, it would be a clear violation of third provision of Article 6, section 29 if the state were to allocate public funds to religious institutions, schools included. In addition to the state following this provision, the state is also maintaining neutrality. A common response to this might state that the government would still maintain neutrality as long as they included all religions in the public funding. However this is untrue. Some religions may have far more instances where funding is required, which would lead to a high imbalance of funding allocations among different religions hence breaking the states neutral position it is attempting to take. It is far simply, and far more fair, for the state to maintain neutrality towards religious institutions by avoiding entanglement. This reduction in entanglement and the government holding a neutral position actually gives religious institutions more freedom from government, yet another reason why Maine made the right decision.
This is a very well-written take on the Carson v. Makin case. Both sides have presented strong arguments and made very good points. However, I believe that the state of Maine did not violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. First of all, as the author pointed out there is a law that prohibits the allocation of public funds to religious groups and institutions. Therefore, making an exemption for these children to use government funds to attend these schools would break this law. As Tommy mentioned above, this does help to keep the neutrality towards religious groups intact. If they were able to allow funding in this instance, then there could be future instances of religious groups looking for funding. Thus, questioning the neutrality of the law. In this case, the students still have other options to use the government-allocated funds at different schools in the area. To conclude, I would have to say that I agree with Maine's decision and do not believe that their actions violated the constitution.
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