Academics are anxiously awaiting a major decision in a Maine-centric U.S. Supreme Court case this month, which could lift restrictions on the use of public funds for religious and other private schools.
The High Court is considering an appeal in a case called Carson v. Makin, which stems from a 2018 lawsuit filed by three Maine families against the state Department of Education. The family’s chief attorney is the Institute for Justice, which in recent years has won similar school choice and religious freedom challenges in the current Conservative-majority Supreme Court.
Grace Levitt, Spanish teacher and current president of the Maine Education Association, said: “This is a real blow to those who want to privatize public education and have vouchers. “It will funnel public tax dollars from our public schools.”
Maine does not have a voucher program that would allow families to opt out of local public schools and pay for a private school instead. In this case, the law is more limited, focusing on students in most rural districts where there is no public high school.
State law requires such districts if they do not have an agreement to use a public school in another city, to provide tuition to students for equivalent education in an approved private school in the state or elsewhere.
Other plaintiffs, Troy and Angela Nelson, believe they will refuse to use public money to send their daughter to the private Temple Academy in Waterville, which teaches “purely Christian and biblical worldviews” that they say they want for their children.
As of October 2020, according to court filings, more than 4,000 of these students attended a semi-public academy in Maine, receiving 60% of their funding from the state. Less than 700 students used the tuition program to attend other private schools.
Schools that receive this state funding must meet educational and managerial standards. Since the 1980s, they too have had to be “secular”, defining the state’s desired basic education as religiously neutral. How these private schools can receive state funding and how the state oversees them can reshape the case.
The families who sued the law, led by David and Amy Carson of Glenburn, a small Banger suburb, say Maine’s law unfairly excludes religious schools where they seek help to send their children. They argue that this violates their First Amendment rights.
“No student should be deprived of educational opportunities because, for their situation, a religious education is meaningful. Yet Maine is doing just that, “said Michael Bindas, the family’s chief attorney with the Institute for Justice, in a video of the case last year. “It’s definitely something the Supreme Court shouldn’t have made clear.”
The lower court disagreed, with Maine Education Commissioner Pender McCain ruling in favor and the state’s tuition assistance program finding a precedent in the right to limit access.
“It’s really a push from those who want to privatize public education and have vouchers. It will funnel public tax dollars from our public schools. ”
Grace Levitt, a Spanish teacher and current president of the Maine Education Association
But conservative majority members of the Supreme Court have strongly indicated in December’s oral arguments and related decisions that they could overturn those earlier rulings and use the case to extend the constitutionality of public funds for religious use.
A spokesman for the Maine Department of Education declined to comment before issuing a rule. The appeal focuses on two of the Maine families in the original case. According to the Institute for Justice, Carsons both attended as a child at Bangor Christian School, which describes itself as an “independent” nonprofit public interest law firm located in the Washington, D.C. area.
Carson’s hometown Glenburn doesn’t have its own high school, so they paid to send their daughter, Olivia, to Bangor Christian School, despite being eligible for government funding for a non-sectarian private school. They say in this case that they believe that the religious affiliation of the Christians in Bangor will be excluded from the tuition program.
Other plaintiffs, Troy and Angela Nelson, believe they will refuse to use public money to send their daughter to the private Temple Academy in Waterville, which teaches “purely Christian and biblical worldviews” that they say they want for their children.
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Steve Bailey leads the Maine School Management and School Board Association, who filed a number of amicus briefs in the Supreme Court, appealing against such a decision. He said he believed the families behind the lawsuit were in good faith, but feared a decision in their favor would “wreak havoc” on Maine’s public education system.
Bailey said he was concerned about two major effects: that already limited public school funding would be reduced by families able to afford to re-enroll in private religious schools, and that the curriculum in those schools would be significantly outside Maine’s agreed educational goals.
“The amount of money available to support public school students will be allowed to spread to a much wider and potentially wider population,” Bailey said last week. “I think it’s an attempt to expand or expand the responsibility, as well as the intentions of states and cities to fund religious education.”
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Maine Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster also focused on public education in her argument, saying the goal of the tuition program is to ensure free education in a heavy rural state.
“Excluding communal schools, Maine refuses to fund a single explicit religious practice: an education designed to convert and motivate children with a particular faith,” Forster wrote. He had support in the Amicus briefs from the Biden administration, the state of Vermont, and others.
Forster argues that it is also unclear whether Carson and Nelson’s preferred religious schools will even receive public funding. Representatives of both Bangor Christian and Temple have testified that they would refuse to do so if, in compliance with other state laws, they would have to change their internal policies that bar hiring gay teachers and discriminate against LGBTQ students.
Levitt of the MEA says the problem is exactly the kind of thing that is designed to avoid a fair, secular public school system.
“We want an educated citizen. That’s the way it is with our public education system, “he said. “We don’t want schools that exclude students or do not welcome all students.”
This story is produced Main monitor, A non-profit news outlet operated by Main Center for Public Interest Reporting, and reprinted with permission.
