With all eyes fixated on the United States Supreme Court this week hearing oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case, scant attention has been paid to another potentially landmark case before the court next week on taxpayer funding for religious education. The case is Carson v. Makin , and it stems from a unique situation in Maine, where some school districts do not offer secondary schools. To offset this missing component, the state of Maine provides funding for students who attend high schools in other districts or at approved private schools — both in-state and out-of-state. To qualify as an approved school, Maine requires that an institution be “nonsectarian.” And therein lies the rub because the vast majority of private elementary and high schools in the United States are in some way faith-based and therefore sectarian. And in the present case, the parents who sued the state specifically want to send their children to evangelical Christian schools that align with their preferred “worldview” and “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Generally, American courts have held that government and taxpayer-funded resources should not be used to support schools whose purpose is to indoctrinate students in certain religious beliefs. Such funding has been […]
