The Supreme Court struck down a Maine law that excluded religious schools from being eligible for a state tuition program. The Supreme Court overturned a Maine law Tuesday that blocks religious schools from receiving state tuition assistance allocated for private institutions, claiming it “penalizes the free exercise” of religion in the state. Writing for a 6-3 majority in the case of Carson v. Makin , Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Maine’s tuition scholarship program – which pays for some students to attend “nonsectarian” private schools when there are no public schools in their communities – “operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.” The decision came four years after two families sued the state after they were denied tuition assistance that they planned to use to send their children to Christian schools. The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Maine program, holding that the state was not violating anyone’s constitutional rights by refusing to allow taxpayer money to be used for religious instruction. The three-judge panel included retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who occasionally hears cases in the appeals court. David Carson and his daughter Olivia Carson were […]
