Will the Supreme Court give a big boost to the Trump-DeVos ‘school choice’ agenda?
Will the Supreme Court boost the Trump-DeVos “school choice” agenda?
It just may.
The court on Wednesday heard a case called Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley. It involves a Lutheran church in Missouri and its preschool, which had sought a grant from a state program to use scrap tires for a playground. The request was denied because of an 1875 provision in the state constitution — known as a Blaine Amendment — that forbids using public money “directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination or religion.” The church and preschool sued the state, citing the First Amendment, but lost in a federal district court. A federal appellate court upheld the decision by the state, and it was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
My Post colleague Robert Barnes wrote in this story that at the Wednesday hearing, justices seemed sympathetic to the church. He wrote:
Even some of the court’s liberal justices expressed concern that the state had drawn too hard of a line in saying the fact that a day-care and preschool site is controlled by a church, Trinity Lutheran in Columbia, is reason enough to bar it from the program.“You’re depriving one set of actors from being able to compete in the same way everybody else can compete, because of their religious identification,” Justice Elena Kagan told a lawyer for the state. In such a case, she said, the state’s interests “have to rise to an extremely high level.”
The current Missouri governor has reversed the policy, but lawyers for both sides said the case is not moot because the policy could be changed again by another governor.
So what does this have to do with President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s big push to expand school choice?
DeVos is a longtime advocate of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, as well as voucher and other programs that use public money for private and religious school tuition and expenses. She has made clear that expanding school choice is her top priority, and has referred to traditional public schools as a “dead end” for students. Trump has said he wants to spend $20 billion to help states expand voucher programs and other school alternatives.
The Supreme Court has several options with the Trinity case. It could decide not to rule, or issue a narrow ruling that doesn’t directly affect the current interpretations of the Blaine Amendments, or hand down a broader ruling that declares them unconstitutional.
The Blaine Amendments — which are worded differently in various state constitutions — are part of the constitutions of a majority of states. They have prevented some legislatures from adopting and implementing school voucher programs. Lower courts have offered different Will the Supreme Court give a big boost to the Trump-DeVos ‘school choice’ agenda? - The Washington Post: