Steve Vladeck:
https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1539239499066138627
9:31 AM · Jun 21, 2022

If states are required to fund religious schools on par with state schools, then they should lose their tax exemption.

This Court’s majority is not promoting “non-discrimination” against religious institutions. It is preferring them over state institutions, in order to prefer their own religion. Nothing about either position is remotely constitutional, but it’s what this majority wants, the Constitution be damned. Expand The Fucking Court.

a couple (further) thoughts re: Carson v Makin.

Maine and Vermont are the only two (remaining) states which have historically tuitioned students from rural, sparsely populated regions to existing private schools or academies. The caveat has always been, however, that public dollars can only be used to pay tuition to private schools if the private schools are secular. This is longstanding practice, dating back well over a hundred years.

In his dissent on Carson v Makin, Breyer noted that Bangor Christian School and Temple Academy, the two schools in question, “…have admissions policies that allow them to deny enrollment to students based on gender, gender-identity, sexual orientation, and religion, and both schools require their teachers to be Born Again Christians.”

In Vermont, things will undoubtedly be complicated by a clause in the state constitution prohibiting Vermonters from being forced to support a religion that is “contrary to the dictates of conscience.”

Grace Christian School in Bennington VT, for example, a private school whose handbook for years has equated bestiality and homosexuality which it called “offensive to God.” (That paragraph has been recently removed but the sentiment and precept remains.)

In June 2020, a federal appeals court ruled that four Vermont school districts which had no public high school were required to reimburse families for tuition paid to Rice Memorial High School, a Catholic school in South Burlington, largely following Espinoza v Montana Dept of Revenue. A strange finding given that the families in question all had the option of having their kids tuitioned to other, nonsectarian private schools, several in closer proximity to their homes.

In addition, Vermont Board of Ed recently wrote new rules requiring publicly funded independent schools, including religious schools, to accept students receiving special education services. The ability to winnow out the expense (admittedly poorly-reimbursed by the Feds) of Special Ed students with such canards as “In Our school, All Students Are Special” has stuck in the craw of legislators and taxpayers alike for years. The same goes for the lack of oversight of private school instructors who are not required to hold state licensure.

So where does it go from here — cut off public funding to independent schools in the state(s) entirely? contracts with “approved” independent schools only which bar discrimination against SPED/agnostic/LGBTQ+ students etc in order to receive public money? screwing down state regulations regarding school accreditation much tighter? Or will those things trespass in some way on “free exercise?”

One thing: as every goddam tom, dick & harry preacher-man sets up shop in his garage with a couple of his neighbor’s children then gets in line with his hand out for state aid funds, will there be a “Test of Religious Authenticity” before the check is cut? Or will that also trespass on “free exercise?” Will the spigot open for religious schools, or only some? Will the dollars flow for a school set up by, say, a school established by The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or by The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective? (Murray Bookchin would have loved and hated that idea…)

So I guess this decision means that whoever holds the office of President is not only Commander-in-Chief but also Defender of the Faith.