On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Carson v. Makin, a case about Maine’s public education system. Although Maine will pay to send some Maine children to private schools whose education matches that of a Maine public school, Maine will not pay for religious education. Parents who want Maine to foot the bill for their children’s religious schooling claim this refusal violates their religious liberty and sued. They should lose.
A majority of the justices seem intent on continuing down their path of reading the establishment clause out of the Constitution and privileging religion over all other concerns.
Our democratic form of government depends on an educated citizenry. Consequently Maine, like most states, guarantees a public school education to all its children. In particular, the state wants to make available an education that teaches tolerance and exposes students to multiple viewpoints.
Roughly 5,000 students in Maine live in school districts too sparsely populated to support a public school. To ensure that these rural students also have access to a Maine education, Maine subsidizes their attendance at any private school that provides the equivalent of a secular Maine public school curriculum. Maine will not, however, subsidize attendance at private schools with a religious curriculum.
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