Weingarten: Right wants states to use public dollars for religious schools
WASHINGTON – The religious right wants the U.S. Supreme Court to force states to use public dollars for religious schools, Teachers President Randi Weingarten warns.
In a message to her union’s 1.6 million members late last month, the AFT leader, a civics and government teacher from New York City, adds the religious rightists are counting on the High Court’s five-man GOP-named majority to uphold their demand.
Weingarten commented just days before the court heard oral arguments on the case, Espinoza vs Montana Department of Revenue, on Jan. 22.
In the case, three families who had received taxpayer-paid $150 yearly vouchers to send their kids to any private school will lose them at the end of this school year, because using the vouchers to send kids to religious school violates the federal constitution’s ban and a state constitutional ban on government “establishment” – promotion of — religion.
Other states have similar bans in their constitutions. If the court sides with the right, all those prohibitions, called “Blaine Amendments,” would get tossed.
The GOP Trump administration, for whom the religious right is a major political constituency, joined in the CONTINUE READING: Weingarten: Right wants states to use public dollars for religious schools – People's World