If a state pays for a student’s secular education, must it also pay for students’ religious education? That’s the question presented in Carson v. Makin , a case currently being argued at the Supreme Court. Maine, with a large area and small student population, pays for students to attend private, secular schools in districts that don’t have a public high school. Now, some religious schools are demanding taxpayer dollars for their students regardless of the provision in Maine’s constitution that prohibits public funding for religious education. Both sides recognize the fundamental legal principle that government must be “neutral” (Thomas Jefferson used the term “impartial”) vis-à-vis different religions or between religion and no religion. The question is how to apply that principle. Maine argues that it is willing to pay for any schools offering the same education available in public schools, a secular education with a proscribed curriculum. The state is “neutral” in who it pays for such a secular education, but it is not required to expand purchases with tax dollars to an essentially different product, a religious education. After all, if any “education” qualifies, a student could argue that the state should pay for her sports car, something […]
