The Most Important School Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court This Session
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case called Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that will determine whether the United States–or any state–may still respect a separation of church and state.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s choice of two far-right Justices to the Supreme Court, this case might well be decided in a way that removes all prohibitions on the use of public funds for religious schools.
The facts of the case are these: Like many states, Montana’s state constitution forbids the funding of religious schools. The Montana legislature passed a tax credit program that funds vouchers for religious schools. The Montana Supreme Court ruled that the law violated the state constitution. Now, the case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Many states have such prohibitions (and in some of them, like Indiana and Florida, the state courts decided to ignore the explicit language of the state constitution and allow vouchers for religious schools on the claim that the money goes to the family not the religious school that actually gets the public money). The typical attack on state bans on funding religious schools is that such prohibitions are “Blaine amendments,” adopted in the late 19th century at the height of anti-Catholic bigotry; because they were passed in a spirit of bigotry, the argument goes, they should be struck down.
In Montana, the prohibition on funding religious schools is CONTINUE READING: The Most Important School Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court This Session | Diane Ravitch's blog
