Attention, religious conservatives: Be careful what you wish for. Because this week, I’m on your side.
Sorta.
Three Maine families have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to force the state to pay tuition for their kids to attend church-sponsored schools.
I think that’s perfectly OK.
Here’s the catch. Current state law prohibits spending any public money on religious education. So, I could also live with leaving everything just the way it is.
That’s not as contradictory as it seems.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The same rule applies to the states, so there are two ways Maine could go to meet that requirement. Either it could refuse to spend a dime on religious education, or it could agree to pay for any and all spiritual schooling. The state opted for the cheaper alternative.
The religious right has never been happy with that constitutionally acceptable decision. And now it has the backing of the federal Department of Justice. “Under the Constitution, governments may not exclude students from education programs solely because of their religious status or their religious choices,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband in a press statement. “The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that all children and their families may participate in benefit programs without discrimination based on their faith.”
That’s fine with right-wingers, who tend to have a limited concept of what sorts of sectarian schools would qualify for government funding. In the case of most of those advocating for this lawsuit, these institutions would be Christian. And not some lefty, liberal, watered-down version of Christianity with same-sex marriage and feminism and R-rated movies. They’re talking Bible-thumping schools, where students are taught the world is only a little more than 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs coexisted with cavemen, and John Oliver is the Anti-Christ.
That’s not exactly in line with what the Constitution says. That document would appear to require that if we’re going to give taxpayer money to one religion, we’ll have to give it to all of them. And that could quickly turn into a faith-based conservative’s nightmare.
Those government checks might go to Muslim schools, where they’d teach Sharia law. Or Hindu schools, where they’d proclaim that cows are sacred and hamburgers are evil. Or Reform Jewish schools, where they’d indoctrinate kids in the belief that Donald Trump is a lying sack of decaying protoplasm. Or Satanic schools, where the cafeteria menu features mystery meat every time neighborhood kids or pets disappear.
It’s enough to make a sensible conservative acknowledge there’s a lot to be said for the status quo.
Maine’s law has been challenged in court several times in the past and has always been found to be constitutionally sound. But lately, the judiciary has been infested with lots of Trump-appointed judges, and there’s no telling how strongly these newbies feel bound by precedent. As attorney Stephen Whiting, who supports the religious parents’ case, told the Associated Press, “The law has changed over time, and now it’s time for the court to look at this thing as a constitutional right.”
Wait, isn’t that the same argument liberals used to justify legal abortions?
I warned you religious conservatives to be careful what you wish for.
I always thought going to any school was hellish. Your views on the educational afterlife can be emailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.
“Human law is law only in virtue of it’s accordance with right reason;
and thus it is manifest that is flows from the Eternal Law.
And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called Unjust Law;
in such case it is not law at all, but rather a species of violence”
St. Thomas of Aquinas.
Does/Will school choice make public schools better (what conservatives believe) or worse (what liberals believe)? I think better. Not sure what Al believes.
Religious schools are not in any way, shape or form, public. They operate outside of the department of education, and they are church affiliated tax exempt properties. The church pays no taxes, and receives no benefits that are funded with tax money, no SSi, no medicaid/medicare, none. Taxes fund public schools, not private ones, if people want to send their kids to a private school, they can spend their own money do to it. enough of this stupid endrun on Christian schools, it is a ploy, once the school accepts government money they get government control and that will give the leftists in Augusta say over the things that the schools can teach. This isn’t about the school not accepting students based the belief system of those students, this is the government being asked to directly fund a religious organization, and it can’t do that under the first amendment. Funding a charter school so Maine students can attend it, is a whole different bowl of wax.
We are already funding public schools that everyone is free to attend. We even provide transportation. If parents decide they do not want to send their kids to public school, that is their choice but THEY should pay for a different school be it religious or whatever. How about these expensive elite schools for rich kids? Do we start paying for those too? Under our present tax system we are already struggling to support our public schools let alone expand that and start paying for schools that are not required to meet education standards. Unless there is a tax increase, it will take money away from the public school system. And what comes after that….pay parents when they home school their kids?
I do not think any public funds should be spent on indoctrinating kids into a mythology – be it Christian, Islam, or whatever. I will and do respect peoples’ religious beliefs, as a teacher I try to emphasize the importance of that (one should respect Islam and Christianity equally, of course), but these are ideas outside science and logic, and thus are not part of a publicly funded education. If Christian schools get funding, so should Islamic schools. Both religions have had evil done in their name; both rest on solid, admirable values. Neither is “better.”
As the founder of the School choice Association; one of the co-founders of the charter school movement with Jeanne Allen and others; an author of school choice legislation with Phil Harriman; and having met with countless local parents and groups I’m a bit knowledgeable about the research findings and the various perspectives like power transfers to parent(s) to purchase the best education for their children.
I also was one of the first people hired by PROJECT HEADSTART to implement programs around the U.S for one year and working in the largest single program in the U.S. as Operation’s manager for TOTAL ACTION AGAINST POVERTY in the Greater Roanoke, Va. region—-we had 800 children year round and 2,000 in the summer.
Given the failure, at that time of the public schools to provide poor minority children an education which might provide a career or a path into higher education, I’d still have to say we enabled a lot of children to move into the middle and professional classes.
I was very impressed with the political demand by Black and Hispanic moms in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. which resulted after great sacrifice in school choice legislation being passed.
I was also impressed with the Supreme Court Victories by the INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE on behalf of the Cleveland school voucher program, to the extent that spending public monies on an education at a sectarian school is no longer defacto Unconstitutional.
All of these options provide competition to the public schools and they have to prove that they can do a better job of educating a poor child to get additional funding. Jesuit run schools now have large numbers of poor students succeeding, and little evidence they are imposing religious ideology on students. There is one Catholic High school whose student body is nearly all Jewish.
Life is about being able to have choices and options, so it should be when it comes to the education of your child. There is no greater incentive to parental involvement than control over the funding of their education.
Frank, The program in Cleveland was ruled in favor of because it gives the money to the parents and lets them choose which of the participating schools they would like their kids to attend(the de facto part) but that the government could not directly pay or solicit a religious school(the de jure part). Another part of the program. Al’s article says the people want the state to pay for tuition specifically for a religious school, the government can’t do that directly, nor can they be forced to do it indirectly. If Maine should somehow adopt a program similar to Ohio, the details can be hashed out by SCOTUS or the state can use previous rulings and plan accordingly.
@Scott Erb…”I do not think any public funds should be spent on indoctrinating kids into a mythology”. It’s already being done. The mythology is called liberalism.
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:5-6
“Jun 30, 2017 – Religious hospital systems are the fastest growing hospital systems in the … neared $700 million, bringing total public funding to $45.2 billion.”
One set of ‘rules’ for health care and another for education???
Both tax credit and voucher programs are school choice options for Ohio. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld Cleveland’s voucher program under both the state and U.S. Constitutions, and the Ohio Legislature has since enacted several more voucher programs.
Model Legislation: Education Savings Account, Parental Choice Scholarship Program (Universal Eligibility), Parental Choice Scholarship Program (Means-Tested Eligibility), Special Needs Scholarship Program, Foster Child Scholarship Program, Autism Scholarship, Great Schools Tax Credit Program, Family Education Tax Credit Program
Relevant Case Law:
Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002)
The U.S. Supreme Court held that Cleveland’s Scholarship and Tutoring Program does not violate the Establishment Clause because the program is neutral with respect to religion, provides benefits directly to a wide spectrum of individuals, and allows those individuals to freely choose between religious and non-religious schools.
School Choice options have blossomed and greatly expanded since the Cleveland case; no more so than in Florida. This is one summary from a May Orlando Sentinal:
“What is now the Family Empowerment Scholarship program — and Florida’s fifth voucher initiative — could provide state-funded scholarships, or vouchers, that send up to 18,000 students to private school starting in August.
Florida’s four current voucher programs send more than 140,000 students to private schools, at a cost of nearly $1 billion. About 100,000 use the Tax Credit Scholarship program, the state’s largest voucher effort, and about 80 percent of those youngsters attend religious schools, most of them Christian.
The vouchers also pay for students to attend private Islamic schools, including one in Orlando where girls must wear hijabs, the “evils of modern society” are kept at bay, and secular lessons are taught hand-in-hand with a “practical study of the Quran.”
And they cover tuition at Jewish schools, including an Orthodox school in Boca Raton, where Hebrew lessons, Torah studies and “an attachment to the state of Israel” are woven into the school day.”
Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship and McKay Scholarship programs have successfully weathered legal battles, while the other two, the Gardiner and the Hope scholarship programs, haven’t been challenged. They all serve either low-income students or those with disabilities.
Voucher supporters, including DeSantis and other GOP leaders, are confident the new program can survive a lawsuit, too.
“I’m comfortable if we have to litigate this,” said Ari Bargil, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which has defended voucher programs nationwide. “All this program does is recognize parents’ fundamental right to select the best for of education for their own children.”
*The head litigator who successfully argued the Cleveland case is a long time summer resident of Maine; unimpressive in person, but a winner before the U.S. Supreme court!
Old Maineiac: Liberalism is a belief in limited government, free market capitalism, democracy, protection of individual rights (esp. life, liberty and property), usually by forming a Republic. It’s not a mythology, it’s an ideology that posits this kind of limited government as superior to old style Monarchies, or other conservative forms of government. Schools generally look at our Democratic Republic favorably, but I don’t think that’s because of any mythology. In terms of political issues schools focus on facts and data (e.g., where does the evidence lead, not what do the politicians say.)
” generally ” people tend to listen to what their elected leaders say, ( goes for media generated noise ) rather than focus on facts and data. Familiar with Edward Bernays?
Could also be said that students ” generally ” tend to rely to what their teachers/parents say ( due to who the teachers/parents are and the positions they are in ) rather than go with facts and data thingies.
I think it would really depend on the class, teacher and subject. But generally you might be correct, Scott, maybe.
‘Liberalism is a belief in limited government’ is the dumbest statement I’ve ever read on DB!
Many years ago I would have agreed with the separation of church from education. But we have allowed charter schools in Maine (Maine Connection Academy). But that system does not work with younger grades. If someone finds that a “Christian School” works for there children and are unhappy with the education process of public schools then they should be able to receive federal money. But will the school want public funds? Because once they receive that federal money they would have to become compliant with the “No Child Left Behind Laws” which is what has messed up the public systems.
all i know is catholic school messed me up more than any substance i ever put in my body.
All I know is that public school was something I had to “get over”
Can I get a witness!! LOL.
“When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school,
It’s a wonder I can think at all.”
Mr Erb is proof that we need “external” guidance..
Talk about being blind to ones own folly…
WOWEE !!
Publicly Funded Education has gone so far off the rails that they don’t even remember “normal”.
Jibber Jabber.
Humanist,
A fool says in his heart “there is no God”.
And yet,,Christ maintains His Love for them.
They know not what they do….
The Prince of Peace has not changed.
…but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Matthew 5:22
Thanks Proff…. I tried to say something along that line… a couple of times… but it got rejected… Thanks again.