The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard argument earlier this month in yet another funding case that explores the limits of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trinity Lutheran . In that case, the Court held that under the First Amendment a church could not be denied access to a state playground refurbishment grant program, even though the state’s constitution prohibits the state from funding religion. The Supreme Court, however, emphasized that the funds in question were for a playground and indicated that its ruling did not address “religious uses of funding.” That warning hasn’t dissuaded plaintiffs from using the Trinity Lutheran ruling to demand access to government funds in circumstances that otherwise would be prohibited under state law. The First Circuit’s case, Carson v. Makin , involves parents whose children do not live in a district with a high school. In such cases, state law requires the government to fund that child’s private education, but only for a nonsectarian school Maine’s restriction against sectarian funding has been upheld numerous times, including by the First Circuit in a case called Eulitt , but not since Trinity Lutheran . The parents/plaintiffs in Carson claim that Trinity Lutheran supersedes Eulitt […]
