The Supreme Court Is Considering Forcing You To Fund Religious Education
One of the most important things that separation of religion and government does is ensure that Americans are free to give financial support only to the faiths of their choosing – or support none at all.
That’s the ideal, anyway. Sadly, the Supreme Court has been drifting away from that principle, and during this term, the high court might even rule that under certain circumstances, taxpayers can be compelled to support religious schools.
In a pending case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the justices will consider an appeal of a ruling handed down in December 2018 by the Montana Supreme Court.
The state high court struck down a private school voucher program that used tax credits to divert public funds to private religious schools, finding that it violated the clear language of the Montana Constitution, which protects religious freedom by barring “direct or indirect appropriation or payment from any public fund or monies … for any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.”
Religious freedom protection language like this is found in three-quarters of the state constitutions. It’s designed to ensure that no one is taxed, directly or indirectly, to pay for someone else’s religion.
Opposition to church taxes, no matter what they may be called or what form they may take, has a long history in the United States. As James Madison once argued, if the government can force you to pay even a minuscule amount to support religion, it can compel you to conform in other ways.
“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” Madison wrote in 1785. “That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment CONTINUE READING: The Supreme Court Is Considering Forcing You To Fund Religious Education | Americans United for Separation of Church and State
