(Pixabay image via Courthouse News) BOSTON (CN) — Maine can provide tuition reimbursement to parents who send their children to private schools but not to parents who send their children to religious schools, the First Circuit held Thursday. The 63-page ruling could have national implications inasmuch as roughly half the states have tuition voucher programs of some sort, said Leslie Davis Hiner, vice president of the advocacy group EdChoice, in an interview. And the issue isn’t going away quickly. “We will immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney, Tim Keller of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm in Virginia. “Today’s decision is disappointing for families across Maine, but we are confident the Supreme Court will ultimately put a stop to it,” Keller said in a statement. Maine is a rural state and the majority of its school districts don’t have their own high school. As a result, the state allows parents to apply for tuition reimbursement after enrolling their children in the nearby public or private school of their choice — so long as the school isn’t religious. Three families who wanted to send their children to Christian schools filed a lawsuit […]
