The U.S. Supreme Court has signaled that it could require Maine to expand a public tuition benefit to religious high schools. The justices heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that could have nationwide implications for school choice programs. Maine allows students in towns with no public high schools to put taxpayer money toward the cost of an outside school, public or private. But the law bars them from using those funds at religious schools. The families who filed this lawsuit want to do away with that rule. The conservative majority seemed sympathetic to the idea that the existing program discriminates against people based on their religious beliefs. They repeatedly posed hypotheticals about which private schools would be allowed to participate in the program and questioned what degree of religious instruction would be acceptable for a school to receive state funds. Some justices appeared to conclude that Maine’s program made unfair value judgments. “We have said that is the most basic violation of the First Amendment clauses for the government to draw distinctions between religions based on their doctrine,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. The plaintiffs are represented by the Institute for Justice, a national law firm that takes […]
