The people who, in these comments, excuse or even praise control of life by religious sects have no idea what they seek. We've seen such places, of course, in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iran and it really isn't a pretty sight. This week it's forcing us to pay taxes to support right wing evangelical churches and for the indoctrination of our children. Next week the reverend Billy Bob assumes leadership of the Muhtawa (religious police). Burning heretics at the stake in the city square won't be far behind that.
14
We have been at war for TWO DECADES and the average American can’t tell the difference between Sunni and Shia.
We have so many versions of Christianity - Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian Evangelical, Prosperity Preachers ...and then Jews, Orthodox Jews. Hasidic Jews, Seiks, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Scientologist, Mormons and now, Kanye West???? Really? Kanye gets thousands on Sundays. Do you really think he should be tax exempt?
6
New York state has been funding Jewish Yeshiva schools for the past 20 years.. Never heard any public outcry..
4
There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that prevents people from observing their religion. But there does appear to be a faction that believes that unless religion is forced down every person's throat America will not prosper or that this faction will not make it to their version of heaven. Please note: you are free to believe whatever you want. You are not free to inflict it on anyone else against their will. That includes children that are not yours.
22
Everybody wants separation between church and state - as long as it's not their church or smelly orthodoxy being challenged. Call it ethics, values, philosophy, spirituality, whatever euphemism for a religion that you prefer.
George Packer's reporting in the New Yorker offers a devastating look at the unscientific social justice warrior religion that is being preached fervently in NYC public schools. I am certain that one could find a red state, right-wing religious variant of the same phenomenon. More and more, this separation of church and state is being used as a cudgel to punish religious people for existing in the public square. Your (secular) values get a seat; my (religious) values get me kicked to the curb. What happens when your secularism ends up looking awfully religious? Have you been to a Pride parade recently?
Choice and freedom is hard, especially when they belong to unpopular minorities like Orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The Blaine amendments were wrong then, and they are wrong now. If we have a choice, it should be available to Americans of all faiths.
1
If a religious school accepts vouchers the school must not be allowed to have a religious criterion for admission.
A Catholic school should not be allowed to refuse to admit non Christians [aheists, Jews, Muslims etc.]
A local Catholic school in rural NYS used to require a baptismal certificate with admission application.
This may have changed.
3
American Exceptionalism's facade of equality and justice for all is chipped away bit by bit. WASP still carry outsize power over the general population. New census statistics project that the nation will become “minority white” in 2045. But the Supreme Court appointment is for life.
2
As my mother-in-law used to say, I'm glad I'll be dead soon.
11
So, if a public school system doesn't want black children attending public schools with white children, Greenhouse thinks it would constitutionally O.K. for the racists running that system to close down all of the schools.
O.K. Got it.
1
Well the Jewish Orthodox has been doing this for decades in New York and nobody says a word - nobody wants to be labeled anti-Semite.
Anyone can smash and bash Christianity with impunity- However say one thing about Judaism and it's game over.
https://nypost.com/2019/01/19/nyc-yeshivas-collect-more-than-100m-a-year-in-public-funds/
3
wait until other religions open schools... will Americans freak out when the Wahhabi open one...paid by U.S Tax dollars,,,
2
Just wait for the outraged howls of Christians when a Muslim school does its own tax money grab.
5
Sad that the US is turning its back on separation of Church & State. It's a necessary principle in a nation where there are several religious faiths & many citizens who recognize no religion at all.
6
@BlaiseM
"A parent certainly has the right to send their child to a private religious school. How does it follow that I, the tax payer, have to provide public funds for them to exercise that choice."
Those parents are ALSO taxpayers. Why should they be required to subsidize a public school system that many of them (for a variety of reasons) find inferior for their children?
The education of one's children is something most parents consider to be one of the most important decisions they can make. And yet it is currently a decision over which parents have almost the least choice.
City and State governments tell them where their children will go. Parents that can afford it will actually choose where to buy a house based on the local school systems.
Forget religious vs. sectarian schools, why shouldn't all schools be run with vouchers? All parents have to pay taxes for primary and secondary education, which is mandatory in the USA (a good thing).
There's a lot of talk about "fixing" education.
Most solutions involve changes in how government controls it. Want to really fix it? Put vouchers in the hands of every parent, and let them send their children wherever they like. Bad schools would close quite quickly. Funds would flow to schools that produced excellent education in a safe environment.
No government official will EVER love my kids, nor try to optimize for them at levels even remotely approaching those that I do. Take my taxes, but give ME the choice.
2
The Walter Cronkite Republican observes it makes a difference who you vote for. Those who are uncomfortable enough with voting for the lesser of two evils to consider not voting at all need to understand that increases the likelihood that the greater of the two evils will be elected.
6
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
3
Why, for the last several decades, has The New York Times only had one reporter who reports all court related matters from the left side of the political spectrum?
4
"Religious freedom" appears to be code for "mooching off the taxpayers". You want to send your kid to private school, you pay for it.
15
@gkwest: It is for humiliation of others. "You are gay! You are bound for Hell!" and so forth.
3
Aren't We the People already funding parochial schools by granting them tax free status?
On the practical side of the issue.
I went to a small community Catholic school through year 8, then 2 years at a Christian Brother's high school. While the high school was an improvement over the elementary school, I will unequivocally state that I would today be a moron if I weren't motivated to read anything and everything I could get my hands on.
When I finally persuaded my parents to let me finish at a public school I was amazed at the variety of opportunities available there, as compared to the Catholic schools.
(Although I did learn to spell.)
In 3rd grade the nun in charge of that class seemed to be at least 100 years old. In 5th grade my teacher must have been recruited by the someone going door to door in the parish asking women if they hated children much. I don't know if they hired the person who hated children the most or the least.
7
Do the MAGA-hat wearing evangelicals, who pine for a church/state fusion, realize that their tax dollars will fund not only Christian madrassas but Muslim ones too?
4
What about my freedom NOT to pay for YOUR religion? The entire foundation of separation of Church and State was the desire of the first English settlers to get away from State-sanctioned religion and the bloody results of Protestant v Catholic wars and the various inquisitions and rebellions over same. It is no coincidence that this case originates from a State where ALL religious schools are Christian. If their tax dollars were paying for a Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, or even Scientologist education (and don't get me started on the Flying Spaghetti Monster) all we would hear from these quarters is *crickets*.
7
Why do religious convictions receive special treatment under the laws of a secular Government? There is no objective criteria to determine an individual's claim of protected treatment under a religious belief system as opposed to that individual's plea for protection for a purely self serving motivation. Who determines what constitutes a genuine religious belief? Why should there be a safe harbor for self proclaimed protections that cannot be objectively determined and why should religion constitute not only a special case but the only special case?
10
Maybe we should put means testing in front of all educational funding. Why are we using taxpayer funding to educate rich kids when they can easily pay their own way?
3
It is a poetic idea that a "God" of infinite knowledge and powers who created humans came to Earth to know what it is like to need to know one's limitations, but that too is a tautologically ridiculous notion.
1
I propose a lawsuit: Satan worshipers sue Montana for not providing their "school" with such benefits. Make same arguments as the plaintiffs in this case. Let's see how the Court rules then. Absurd, maybe. But so are these decisions and arguments about religious freedom. Let's see who gets to exercise it and where.
4
To point out what Ms. Greenhouse doesn't.
The background to this case is the Blaine amendments, state constitution provisions arising out Rep. James G. Blaine’s 1875 attempt to ban funding for religious schools nationwide and thus cripple Catholic education." A WSJ column summarizes proceedings below: "The Montana Supreme Court held that the program [in question] could not support institutions providing scholarships to religious schools. But it also found that the Department of Revenue lacked the authority to modify the program to exclude religious schools. Because the law authorized what the state constitution prohibited—funding religious schools—the entire law had to be struck down. That meant no private school received funding."
The WSJ column urged the Supreme Court to recognize "that Blaine amendments are discriminatory on their face [and] single out religious institutions for worse treatment than their secular counterparts. Any time government gives effect to such a provision, it violates the First Amendment’s requirement of religious neutrality. While it may be true that religious schools are not the only ones now denied the benefit of the tax-credit program, the Montana Supreme Court still gave effect to a religiously discriminatory rule. Striking down a program that would benefit religious schools on that basis should be enough to trigger First Amendment protection."
Q. E. D.
1
I, for one, am sick of the perversion of our language which claims that "freedom" and "privilege" are synonymous. "Religious freedom" does not mean religious privilege to discriminate against any one who I don't like.
Don't most religions call for getting along with others?
3
Does anyone really think that the price to parents of attending these religious schools will be reduced by the amount of the taxpayer funds that the schools receive? Just another boondoggle to help the GOP turn our newly minted banana republic into an "evangelical" one.
6
Just another part of the GOP plan to destroy the Constitution. If I were a tax paying athiest in Montana where is my benefit? KMW says public schools are inferior to religious ones based on values? Says who; where proven? Just spouts another line of religious rhetoric? If I pay for your kids schooling I want input into the school's program.
6
The atheist can stand in the same line with taxpayers that don’t have children. Heads up: no one cares.
School vouchers are not just used to go to religious schools. They are scheme that allows states to defund public education to support giving out vouchers.
Vouchers rarely go to poor people. Often they go to upper middle class and wealthy families.
Get rid of vouchers that are useless and a waste.
7
Religion would be considered a psychiatric delusion if not for a nice little carve-out to protect mass delusions from being called out. The only reason anyone would send their kids to a religious school is because of their own indoctrination. It's a self-repeating meme that damages society and if anything should be taxed as a vice, not given benefits as if a virtue.
6
Dear Ms. Greenhouse,
How can you be smiling in your picture after making the following statement? “A case over vouchers threatens to breach the wall separating church and state.” With all that is being done to the Constitution by Trump and Republicans, I believe weeping would be a more appropriate visage to share.
3
You know that the Christians supporting this effort will throw a fit once an Islamic madrasa starts getting the benefits of state-funded vouchers. If this is really about "religious freedom" then it must apply to all religions.
5
The irony is that religion in America as one of the pillars of social justice and conscience has been silenced since the assassination of Dr. King.
5
Well, I suppose Montana, Texas and Florida will soon be asked to fund madrasas too. We'll see whether the Supreme Courts will grant cert to enforce religious neutrality on behalf of Muslims. Perhaps, in practice, the First Amendment applies only to Christians.
5
So Evangelicals have made peace with the Court's conservative Catholics? How long will that last?
1
“I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.” ― George Carlin
6
Ending all the subsidies sounds like the correct idea to me. Including all religious tax exemptions. 40% of our country wants a one-party theocratic (Christian) authoritarian state. That way they’ll have US Government protection from, and enforcement against, all the evil degenerate heretics out to get them. Personally, I couldn’t care less what people believe, so long as they don’t try to foist it on the rest of us. But they won’t extend the same courtesy to me. If you think about it, all religious fundamentalists have the same worldveiw, Christian, Wahhabists, Taliban, whoever. No wonder we have endless wars.
9
I do wonder how much enthusiasm the support of religious schools with tax money will retain once the Church of Satan seeks financing.
It always seems as if we support our own religious schools but are a lot less enthusiastic about other people’s.
3
I can hardly wait for madrasahs and Satanist schools to apply for public funding.
3
Here we go, subsidizing religion. Religious folks don't have it in themselves to pay their own way to heaven.
6
So time to tax religion? They want us to find their religion so it’s time to pay up.
3
Why do religious convictions receive special treatment under the laws of a secular Government? There is no objective criteria to determine an individual's claim of protected treatment under a religious belief system as opposed to that individual's plea for protection for a purely self serving motivation. Who determines what constitutes a genuine religious belief? Why should there be a safe harbor for self proclaimed protections that cannot be objectively determined and why should religion be not only a special case but the only special case?
3
Freedom of religion seems to be destroying freedom FROM religion.
56
Every time I read another one of these depressing articles, I am reminded of how lucky we are to (still) live in a country where the secular and religious parts of our society remain (mostly) at arm’s length, despite the best efforts of many on the right to change this resilient feature of our republic.
If you want to read a fine work of how we Americans came to enjoy so much secular toleration amidst so much religious diversity, please read
“The First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic”, William Lee Miller. Professor Miller, a scholar of first rank, died in June 2012 at the age of 86, and here’s a link to his obituary in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/us/william-lee-miller-lincoln-scholar-dies-at-86.html
Here’s a link to a brief review in the William and Mary Quarterly:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1939759?uid=3739712&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21100923399801
I recommend this book be the key text in an American civics course all high school students must take and pass in order to graduate.
2
I’m seeing this case through more than a single lens. I’m thinking of sisters who worked in urban catholic grade schools of CHI whose students, mostly male, begged to be sent to Catholic high schools. Otherwise, they might not live - they meant that quite literally. The culture of public high schools being quite brutal in some cases. Is there yet a Center to the Court that is mindful of the viability of the public school system but willing to make room for options and openings for qualified students in private spheres?
I agree that it’s a less than solid case for the “religious freedom” lobby. But may the court make a distinction between their cover-the-earth hopes and existential situations (options to fund) )where lives and futures are in the balance?
I’m for saving lives and futures in all cases but aware of GOP’s slack hand when it comes to aggressive action to improve public education. And the slackness of some Dems, too.
2
Many European countries, including Denmark, Iceland, and the UK, have a state church. It means that every citizen’s taxes go into supporting this church (though there are ways around it). Nevertheless, all countries with state churches are far more secular than the US that has the highest proportion of religious believers in the developed world (incidentally, higher than Israel which so many on the left accuse of being a “theocracy”). When I taught in Europe, I was surprised to hear from my German students that they had obligatory religious (or “ethics”) classes in high school. I an an atheist but I would rather send my kids to a religious school that provides high educational level and strict discipline than to a public school with unruly or aggressive kids. Perhaps obligatory religious education based on actual history and theology can lower the levels of religious and political fervor in this country.
3
@Mor
You do that. You might consider that school of a "higher" educational level. But that's debatable. It could be worse.
2
On the off-chance that Fundamentalist Christians may someday obtain some reasonable political advice in their churches and schools, I am in favor of them receiving any and all tax advantages the Supreme Court is able to grant them.
Nothing else in our laws and society presently seems to be working.
2
What goes around comes around. Progressives are now facing the unintended consequence of their belief that people who don't believe in religion should be able to dictate policy to those who believe in religion. To believe that there is no God or externally determined morality is just a much a leap of faith as believing the opposite, as one can not prove that God does or doesn't exist. The progressive faith has been given preferential treatment with regards to school vouchers by excluding those whose faith differs. As progressives would claim, any discrimination that favors one group over another should be eliminated. That powerful argument that they have used for decades is now being turned against them. About time.
4
@Dr B -- This formulation is a red herring. The issue has nothing to do with "religion vs. atheism." Most people who send their kids to public schools are not atheists, as is here implied, nor are most public officials. The question rather revolves around the separation of church and state.
53
@Dr B
The vouchers don't "exclude those whose faith differs." The vouchers can go to people of faith, they just can't be used at institutions that promote a particular religion.
15
@Gary I don't believe I phrased it that way, but to make it clearer. Schools by dictate may not mention God or religion, which means they are teaching a secular religion. Why should their religion be supported by the state and not other religions? As for separation of church and state, no one is forcing anyone to go to a public or private school, so the choice remains up to the parents, not the government. That clearly maintains a separation of church and state.
2
Shutting down a need-based scholarship program for students, because some of the money will be directed to students attending religious schools, is plainly nihilism. The agonizing explanations which Ms. Greenhouse attempts to present to justify punishing all students who might benefit, because some might choose to use the funds for education at a Christian or religious school, fall flat. Destroying public benefits of any kind, because some religious people might use them, cannot possibly be justified under any rational reading of the federal Constitution. It bears no relationship at all to the prohibition on 'establishing' a religion.' What Ms. Greenhouse describes as a "symbiosis of convenience" is really a collection of people who have common sense and legal training and understand what the 1st Amendment means, and what it does not.
6
@Tom Wolpert "some of the money"? It seems to me that in the Montana case almost all of the money is going to religious based schools. These are PRIVATE schools. There's a simple principal at work here: no public funds should go to ANY private school because in so doing it undermines the ability of the state to fund its schools. Period.
33
@Tom Wolpert The Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."
It does NOT say "a" religion. Many people like you seem to think the founders only wanted to prohibit a state religion. Not so. They were far more wary of religion in general, and considered it a private matter of choice. They also failed to include any mention of a deity ("god") in our country's Constitution.
12
@Tom Wolpert No. Shutting down a scholarship program because it violates The Constitution is more accurately called following the law.
The Supreme Court has routinely been asked, and has sometimes complied, to do things that hurt people. Whether it's various forms of the Muslim Ban that Trump eventually pushed through, or the recent 'public charge' change to immigration laws.
Common sense legal training would teach you that.
9
It’s interesting that Greenhouse shows so much concern for children and the need to shield them from religious “indoctrination” in parochial schools.
Here’s a simple question - has she walked the halls of an NYC public school lately, let alone looked at the curriculum?
The social justice indoctrination complex has a stranglehold on public schools here and the effects are staggering and truly frightening.
Children may not be able to read, write or add when they graduate, but they will almost certainly be card-carrying social revolutionaries.
By all means, let’s protect the children from zealots, bigots and extremists - of all kinds.
14
@MB Very well said and all too true. We need great public education for all, not indoctrination.
13
T Smith -
I guess that means I was wrong to try and indoctrinate my students in being fair, studious, thoughtful, show their work, and quick to help, but slow to attack another. Or was I being just another Social Justice Warrior?
Indoctrination is part of education. Students who violated my rules of “Respect, Integrity, Achieve, and Safety” were subject to consequences. That is a form of indoctrination. My T.I.s in Air Force basic training were experts in indoctrination. They were educating us on how to be good airmen. Indoctrination is getting people to develop certain habits, so that they can spend more time thinking about the issue they are confronted with, whether that is factoring a polynomial or reducing bullying in school.
The bigger question is what the indoctrination is designed to achieve. I had friends who went to Catholic schools who had their knuckles rapped by a ruler for failing to memorize a catechism correctly. That is also indoctrination, but of a kind that should not be supported by public money. Saying that public money in Montana can be spent on Christian and Islamic schools equally doesn’t hold water when a district has only two Muslim students.
Publicly funded education should be non-sectarian. Period.
40
@MB - "The social justice indoctrination complex…", aka, folks who believe:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
6
Unlike ANY other major issue, I'm leaning toward (gulp!) the Right on this one. Provided that is (admittingly I'm unfamiliar with the actual facts). I'd always believed that the extreme favoritism afforded the once massive Catholic school systems was rationalized on the extreme savings the Church provided the governments and public on it's education taxes. If a person/entity can likewise show substantial public benefit, it should be subsidized accordingly.
3
@Paul Kramer: These subsidies are not contributing to anyone's consent to be governed.
5
@Paul Kramer Let's be clear: standards imposed on public schools may be avoided. The architects of Florida's voucher business implemented a stringent system of accountability. When I retired after 30 years in FL, diplomas denied in FL public schools could be earned with vouchers in private schools. Dual standards fail to reflect "substantial public benefit." Keep your eyes on those actual facts!
3
@Paul Kramer
Nope. Not as long as proselytizing their religious beliefs are part of their curriculum. No way, no how.
2
What about my religious freedom not to be forced to give my tax dollars to a religion I don't believe in? BTW, KMW, I attended 12 years of Catholic school and can attest to the fact that my education was subpar, especially in science (nonexistant in grades 1 through 8 and sketchy during the next 4 years) and math. When a kid has to spend 1 to 2 hours per day doing religious studies, other more important classes are sacrificed. Oh, and the way discipline is handled, as opposed to the "lax" public school: I saw kids yanked out of their desks and shaken, even smacked across the face, for letting a pencil roll down their desktops to clatter on the floor. Some of those teachers were in those schools because public schools wouldn't tolerate their sadism.
5
Our Bill of Rights says we are entitled to "Freedom of religion". That means that we are free to practice any religion we want - it does not mean that private schools dishing up religious dogma must be supported by our taxes. For the most part, schools are supported by property taxes. The problem is that the people at both ends of the property tax curve get no benefit from the school component of their property taxes so they are inclined to fight to limit taxes imposed by the supply of a free education.
So, why not make proven tuition charges a valid and and acceptable deduction from property taxes - or any other source of tax money that is paid for the purpose of enhancing or sustaining education?
1
@William: Congress may not enact legislation to prohibit free exercise of religion, such as the voluntary consumption of psychoactive drugs by consenting adults.
1
It’s time to challenge the understanding of religion as primarily add-on beliefs about the transcendent. They are not theistic add-ons, but interpretations of experience and immanent reality. One cannot just peel off a person’s religious beliefs from the totality of his beliefs and be left with beliefs that he shares with the secularist. Secularism is itself a distinct, anti-religious interpretation of experience and reality. The religious person interprets things differently from how a secularist interprets those same things. Religion in the University
1
The commentariat here misses the point so well laid out by Ms. Greenhouse. The program did not involve direct appropriations by the Montana legislature to private schools. The funds came from individual taxpayers choosing to take a tax credit by donating to a pooled fund of money for scholarships to needy students. These scholarships could be used at any private school, secular or parochial.
A victory at SCOTUS by the parents and the administration is not the sky falling. The Zelman case highlighted by Linda G. already allows a neutral voucher program in which the parents make the choice and can choose parochial schools. Thus it all depends on how the majority opinion treats the issue of entitlement. Are private and religious schools entitled to a dollar for dollar match in overall school funding alongside public schools? I doubt the court will go that far as it would upend state and local education budgets countrywide and destroy the establishment clause.
1
I won't suggest that religious schools should be banned, but I wonder about the kind of education their pupils get.
Are they taught about the theory of evolution, for example?
1
Quoting John Adams he had an opinion, "Ever since the reformation, when or where has existed a protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry?" and "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects.?" The main question it seems to me is what do people who believe differently or not at all do when that exclusion becomes paramount? Buying into religion means buying into hate and exclusion and calling that religious freedom.
3
Long ago, #TheReligiousWhite's most vocal and intolerant big mouths (literally, for lack of a better term) threw their hands up in the air, decided the US was unfixable, and proclaimed the only way to preserve the Constitution as the Framers intended (before being defiled by those who didn't know Christ's redemption) was by taking over.
And they abundantly have, thanks to Trump's desperation to do whatever fundamentalist Christians ask to retain their wholehearted support.
(Ironically, coincidentally really, the Christian nationalists Trump hired are among the most selfish, faux patriotic, dishonest, and contemptible public officials ever to fill -- all at once, no less -- the executive branch.)
Let's look at Betsy DeVos. No rational-thinking person would ever consider her for secretary of education, which is exactly why fundamentalist Christians demanded her. These people loathe public schools -- ever since "the religion of secularism because public schools' established church" -- and that is exactly why like-minded DeVos's job is safe.
Literally, the goal is to end public schools and create a new regime where private (TRANSLATED: Christian) schools will be free (or nearly free) because our tax dollars will be paying for everything.
And, yes, there will be secular schools too because DeVos is all about "options" -- whether or not fundamentalists will allow secular schools to NOT begin the day with prayer hasn't yet been ironed out.
4
For the time being, this is not about vouchers. We don't have them in Montana.
SB410, passed in 2015, provided for matching tax credits for donations to school scholarship funds, up to $150.
The tax credit was denied for donations to schools with religious affiliations.
It was a stupid exclusion, which is going to end up with our State Constitution, Article X, Section 6, being
struck down.
Section 6. Aid prohibited to sectarian schools.
(1) The legislature, counties, cities, towns, school districts, and public corporations shall not make any direct or indirect appropriation or payment from any public fund or monies, or any grant of lands or other property for any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.
(2) This section shall not apply to funds from federal sources provided to the state for the express purpose of distribution to non-public education.
3
Public support for religious schools is wrong and should be eliminated. The religious schools are not subject to state curriculum requirements or other state mandates.
6
The current intellectual basis of this debate is built on sand. We should scrap the entire framework of church-state separation, with its emphasis on "entanglement" and "endorsement" of the state in religious affairs, and the requirement of a "secular purpose"; and replace it with a framework that allows greater expression of religious views and values in public debate, but that strictly limits expenditure of public funds for religious purposes. After all, advocacy of non-religion is itself taking a stance on religious belief. Thus, "secular purpose" rationales for political decisions are inherently "religious."
1
The article says that "religious education serves a purpose." And what purpose is that ? I think that in this day and age, many/most people realize that all religions are human creations. The problem with religious beliefs arises because their creed usually provides humans with an exalted status - above all other species. Which in biological terms, is nonsense. We all evolved in the same way, from simpler life forms. The sooner that we move beyond religion, and accept our presence as just another species sharing this planet with everyone else, the bettor off we will be.
6
Maybe the petitioners have a point. How is a law requiring tax credits to offset payments to all nonpublic schools, including those that happen to be religious, different from a law requiring taxpayer funding for the pavement of roads in front of all buildings, including churches? Should we require churches to pay special assessments for the pavement in front of their buildings? While Montana's legislative intent might be a factor in the Supreme Court's decision, conceptually I see no distinction.
@Christi: Roads are typically public. Churches are private.
2
@Christi : You won’t see a distinction until some religion that you really really do not believe in asks for you tax money.
1
Children should be taught facts in school. Look at the religious of today. The religious that holds the likes of trump on a pedestal. The goal post is always moving. Maybe parents ought to teach their children at home. What is acceptable today in religion used to be totally unacceptable. If you want to send your child to publicly funded school or to a private school is your choice. But to ask that public funds go to a religion is a bridge too far. Use your own money if you want to send your children to any school that's not publicly funded. It does feel as if this isn't about religious but more about control. There's a lot of money behind controlling the masses. Churches are supposed to instill values into people and compel people in that way. But they want the gov't to do their job of enforcing their beliefs into society. Morally does need to be taught especially today with morally corrupt leaders at the helm who have no problem with blatant lies and their moral corruptness daily. Take it away altogether rather than allowing public funds to go to religious schools.
3
@Just Me: These people coerce exercise of religion. Free exercise of religion is voluntary.
So now that the door has been cracked how long before tax dollars are expected to pay for any and all religious schools?
4
It's a matter of principle. Public funds should not go to religious institutions, full stop. There is already enough blurring of state and church in this administration (and within the Federalist Society that got Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court).
6
What if everyone knew we live only one life, and when it ends we return to the infinite oblivion we experienced before we were born?
6
@Steve Bolger To believe this takes more faith then believing in God.
you infer experience in the great oblivion.? both pre birth and post life. why? what pre birth oblivious experience do you recall?
1
Some commenters want to tell us the "correct" reading of the Constitution and/or the founders' intentions, but the government goes by what their SCOTUS says -- that's democracy and the rule of law.
You are mainly spectators. You might vote, but if you don't live in a battle-ground state, and New York isn't, your vote won't do anything. However, if you are uber-rich who can affect the outcome of billion dollar campaigns, you have resources for far better choices than the public schools.
2
"But to the contrary, that’s exactly where the wall of separation has to be maintained with the greatest care." There is no wall of separation. The wall was referenced in a letter from Thomas Jefferson, who was Ambassador to France during the writing of the Constitution. It is nowhere in the Constitution. The Constitution addresses free exercise of religion, and no establishment of a state religion, directed at the Anglican Church in 1787, today directed at all religions or a lack thereof. Why can't such a simple point be expressed accurately? Is this an inadvertently or intentionally misleading factual error?
2
so what xtian is being refused their right to free worship? public money for tuition or a playground surface has ZERO to do with freedom to worship. not receiving public money to go to a religious school, doesnt hinder freedom of worship. as the school is not integral to, or a stated requirement for worship. no ones freedom to worship is restricted by not being funded to go to a religiously based school.
1
People should be free to practice any religion they choose, but should not expect tax dollars to subsidize that practice.
3
JimB, thanks for the simple but correct answer. Why do we need to provide a building for the free expression of religion?
What if churches decide free expression requires the payment for Chippendales and pole dancers for their services?
This was part of the religious right's long game. I do not want my money used to fund private religious studies of any kind. We must fight to remain secular.
6
Koch brothers 101: GOP lawmakers want to kill public education. Wouldn’t hurt their kids, they believe, for they can afford parochial tuition, especially if vouchers get expanded, as they want. Would only hurt lower-income families, which would help “keep them in their place.”
4
How can it be a free exercise of religion if it’s subsidized by the state?
6
The religious right and Christian backers of these vouchers better be careful what they are asking for. If Christian schools are ruled to be eligible for publicly funded educational vouchers based on religious freedom, it won't be long before vouchers for madrassas, Jewish schools, and schools of any other religion will also be required to be allowed by a favorable Supreme Court ruling. Betsy at the Dept of Ed won't be thrilled about that result.
1
This was obvious all along. Republicans want to gut public education and fund religious schools.
7
Seculosity, the worship of the secular in life, is as much of a religion as anything taught in these private schools. The only difference are the gods that are worshipped.
4
Public schools must educate everyone. Special needs children are guaranteed a "free and appropriate" education in that system. Not so with private schools; they have to obligation to educate the "least among us" (to use their words).
The transfer of taxpayer funds to private schools will further erode the protections and services afforded to the most vulnerable students These services are tailored to make these students productive members of society. Taxpayers will pay again when these students require additional social services.
6
I know opinion pieces are written from a distinct point of view but a seasoned journalist like Ms. Greenhouse should know better than to write such a one-sided piece.
Why shouldn't school tuition vouchers be used for parochial tuition if they can be used for non-religious private schools? And though Ms. Greenhouse thinks the equitable approach is to take away the vouchers from all non-public schools, this is an equally unfair result which harms families who don't want to send their kids to public schools. Ms. Greenhouse - why is this an acceptable result?
Regarding religion, I believe that the Constitution's anti-establishment clause goes hand in hand with its free exercise clause. The words "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution, it was created by Courts and should be modified where public entities implementing it violate the free exercise clause. As is the case here. I am not a Republican nor a religious conservative (I strongly support same sex marriage and reproductive rights). I would argue that the "separation" doctrine is itself not in the center, nor balanced, because it too often is used to abridge the free exercise clause. Don't condemn this right just because folks you deem to be religious zealots are fighting for them. Behind them, are every day individuals who simply want to use their tax dollars (or scholarship dollars) to support the school that provides a similarly great education - which sometimes is a religious school.
3
@Be balanced. There is not one religious institution (church, School) in this country that has had any of their free exercise abridged by the government (barring law-breaking acts). What they are asking for are tax-payor dollars, paid by citizens of every religious (or not) persuasion to be given to them to teach/promote the tenants of only their particular religion. And they still don't want to pay any taxes into the system (property taxes, income taxes, per capital taxes....) that they want to grant them free $$.
I exercise my religious freedom by giving my own $$s to those I feel match my values. This proposal/policy would require that you contribute the same. Sound OK? No religious institutions you would object to the government requiring your financial support?
3
It does hurt- simply for the assumption that all people of Montana (and if this ruling sides with religion then it will encompass all Americans) belong to a single branch of faith- Christianity- and that public tax dollars are then being used to support a religion.
The founders of our country held clear beliefs and attempted at the time to ensure there was a wall between church and state and that taxes obtained from citizens would not be given towards religious organizations.
Over time and by erroneous judicial decisions- that wall has been broken down-bit by bit. Citizens of all and NO faith are now finding religion encroaching upon their choices/lack of choices and encumbering their tax dollars to support religious organizations that they do not belong to and don't believe in.
Should a Satanist school or a Islamic school or a Wiccan school suddenly wish to claim some of those private school voucher funds- surely the tune would change. It would be- "Oh- those funds are only for "OUR" religion. Therefore- leading to a public/government funded and approval of only specific religion or religions- which goes against everything the founders believed in and what the Constitution stands for.
Religious freedom depends upon the wall. Keep it in place or the inevitable backlash against religion will be not just understandable- but welcome.
3
I am a product of 7 years of a parochial school education. The year I switched over to public school was a repeat of my previous year practically. That did not sway my overall education because the small town I grew up in had a fairly decent public school system. Many went onto college. I still studied. I still pushed myself. I too went onto college. I have been tax payer for years. I haven't any children yet I have paid school taxes for almost 30 years in the city I live. Is it true that the education one receive in a parochial school better than public? To a certain extent yes but society has changed greatly since I graduated high school almost 40 years ago. The Catholic Church was not kind to me and I won't go into all that. The founding father were right to separate church and state. One does have a right to practice their own choice of religion. Should the greater public pay for this? Sorry no.. My parents paid for my education through contribution to the church weekly. I paid with my contributions weekly. My mother volunteered. I volunteered. My whole family volunteered.
What is taught in the home has shown me that discrimination and hate has been taught in the home since I was a child. Not in my house but in others. It has taken years for me to come to this conclusion but all the division in this country has come about because of what is taught in the home first.
Separation of church and state is pretty simple. Separate.
10
"“The court said you can’t deny a generally available public benefit to an entity that’s otherwise qualified based solely on its religious character or nature,” Mr. Wall said of that 2017 ruling."
An "an entity that’s otherwise qualified" must be an 'educational institution', correct? If so, we need to start by defining what 'education' taxpayers are willing to pay for while keeping religion/state separation.
If a religious school was identical to a non-religious school in all respects, BUT was taking an extra couple of hours per week to teach about the particular religion it belongs to, I wouldn't have so much problem. But if the teaching of religion is the primary activity of the school, I have a serious problem. Why? Because in my opinion taxpayers are willing to pay educate the future generations of American workers who will fully contribute to economic growth and advance our country. Teaching primary education cannot do that.
@CacaMera
Correction to last sentence: Teaching primarily religion cannot do that.
Dozens of Western democracies all over the world have figured out how to do this - integrate parochial schools with mainstream schools - see our Northern neighbor.
It is really not that tough - except for those among us that want to make it that tough
@SteveRR
Can you explain what you mean by that 'Integrate parochial schools with mainstream schools'? What's a mainstream school, do you mean public school? And what do you mean by 'integrate'?
I am surprised the Supreme Court is hearing this case. Ending the program seems to be a non-discriminatory act. That it’s before the Court suggests that several Justices want to change precedent.
3
Republican Conservatives years ago started a war of all against all the fruit of which is seen today in the SC and Congress. Through the Citizens United decision wealthy Conservatives and corporate entities have been allowed to pour huge amounts of money into political races. That money controls the ads for races and he who controls the process controls the outcome.
Extreme right wing Court nominees are voted in because the Repubicans spent humonguous amounts of money in the various states over the past two decades and won Senatorial races and gubernatorial races. Once in control of state governments they used the power to gerrymander Congressional Districts, to eliminate thousands of voters, to deter thousands of others by placing an inadequate number of polling places in difficult to get to areas etc -- in short: to make voting difficult or impossible for those who did not support their platform. They did this in order to push down the number and type of voter (usually poor and non-white).
Today in the Senate we see the result of this decades long process: Republican Senators and Trump lawyers argue with a straight face that the President may act however he wants with no ability of Congress to rein in the action even when it threatens the safety of the nation. This is the long game for all demagogues -- Party or person.
Unlimited money has paved the way for the demise of our democracy and the birthing of an oligarchy backed by extreme Christian religion.
7
@BRothman: You are right, but it needs to be added that in addition to buying political office, the ultra-wealthy conservatives are also financing this litigation and similar attacks on separation of church and state to further enforce their “only Christians” beliefs.
Where I live, a large portion of my property taxes goes to fund public schools. My neighbor sends his kid to a private(and in their case associated with a religion) school. They get a voucher. He chooses to not use what is provided for with our tax dollars. I have no kids so I too choose not to use what is provided for with our tax dollars. Why don’t I get a voucher? In fact, I have never attended a public institution even though I have an advanced degree. I am owed a bunch of vouchers!
4
@Mr Bretz
Good luck with that. You are a very funny man :)
1
Separation of Church and State means exactly that. We all have Religious and non-religious freedom
If parents want their children to have a private or parochial education then they are FREE to do so. But not with State or Federal monies. If the Supreme Court doesn't stop interfering with our Freedoms then who will protect us?
Maybe it is time for Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices. If these lifetime appointments were supposed to allow the Justices to be free from Political influence it isn't working. If they are such great Constitutional Defenders, they are failing miserably.
Their decisions on Voting Rights, Discrimination of
Gays, and Citizens United a but a few of the very bad decisions that have come out of the Supreme Court in the last ten years.
Now they are letting the Evangelicals and Catholics take over the country.
What is next? I know Roe v Wade and not releasing Trump's tax returns.
6
I am a strict separation of church and state citizen. Where ever they have gotten their nose in the public trough I would encourage the state to adopt strict rules for education. Teach one religious course, they gotta teach ALL religions in that course including paganism and witchcraft. And make very sure those kids are attending for the same number of days, hours per day, take the same competency exams and all the teachers have to be qualified.
2
What is the basis of your claim that a Supreme Court majority is determined to lower the constitutional barrier between church and state?
You're quality Linda. Love your work. Love the comments. We have similar issues and debates here in Oz but they are not fought in our highest court. Our religious schools and their religious institutional supporters just hold both sides of our politics over a barrel directly.
2
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
Does not mean that the state is supposed to enforce "freedom from religion", as that would be establishing Atheism as the state religion. It simply means that when it comes to religion the state is not allowed to pick a side. If the Montana state legislature had voted to end the program, I would agree entirely with your assessment, but it did not. The funds were ended by a court ruling that is being defended by essentially declaring Atheism the State Religion of Montana.
The flip side of this is that religious organizations should be careful what they wish for, because once you accept the state's funds you have to accept whatever requirements the state chooses to place on acceptance of those funds. Provided, of course, that the requirements are apply equally to all recipients.
@I want another option
"that would be establishing Atheism as the state religion"
No, it most certainly would not be establishing atheism as the state religion. It would be returning us to the default position, which is the freedom to believe and also the freedom from having the beliefs of others rammed down one's throat.
The default position for humanity is not Christianity, it's no belief at all. No one is born a believer; religious belief is a result of indoctrination by family and/or society at large. There's a reason there are more Hindus in India than in the United States and a reason there are more Baptists in the United States than in India.
Religion is a human construct, not an entity that springs out of nowhere.
4
@I want another option
Actually the State has no say in Charter schools right now. So I am sure any religious school would not have to pay attention to State standards
1
@I want another option
"establishing Atheism as the state religion"
Um, as the saying goes, if atheism is a religion, then Off is a TV channel.
2
What is "collapsing" is not SCOTUS' "center on religion." What is "collapsing" is the incoherent jurisprudence, which Greenhouse would defend, that has turned the First Amendment on its head by making free exercise of religion practically impossible (because it might offend the non-religious or have a religious association). Instead, the Court is being invited to recognize the distortions that McCollum introduced back in 1947, that "the wall of separation" is nowhere in the Constitution but only in Thomas Jefferson's correspondence, and that the free exercise and no establishment clauses are not at loggerheads, requiring more contortions than a Yoga practitioner having a fit.
2
The difficulty with conflating religion with government could not be more obvious. Shall we allow each denomination in the majority in specific areas to make laws that curtail the rights of others or to tap the public funds? Now it's for school, what's next?
Many of those who came here and formed America were escaping from religious persecution. The "religious" right wants to enact anti-abortion legislation nationwide that conforms to its belief systems. They compel the birth of unwanted children and the statistics on felony conviction of adult males who were unwanted chi8ldren is significant.
If the Court rules to allow access to public funds by religious organizations it does so in direct contravention of the argument for the Constitution in the Federalist Papers. It will signal that the Justices have abandoned law for personal preference. With Trump's appointments, it's no surprise.
5
The plaintiff in this case suffered no harm at all. Her right to freely exercise her religious beliefs were completely unaffected. The "free-exercise clause" protects the individual right to exercise religion. No religious establishment is constitutionally entitled to anything. The Establishment Clause does more than prevent Congress/a state legislature from "establishing" a religion; neither can pass a law "respecting an establishment." Here, giving a tax credit "respect[s] an establishment." I wish Congress would pass a law requiring the Supreme Court to apply the Constitution as written. This is an easy case. Montana can exclude religious schools. Montana, in fact, must exclude religious schools. James Madison wouldn't have had it any other way.
9
@Jon
Just to be clear, Montana's Supreme Court didn't just exclude religious schools, it excluded ALL schools, so as to comport with the US Constitution's (and the US Supreme Court's) requirement of religious neutrality when doling out government benefits of various kinds. Giving no vouchers or tax credits to everyone is religiously neutral.
5
I am a public school guy all the way.
Alas, there are public schools that are so dangerous that a civilized society needs to provide alternatives or at least provide assistance to alternatives.. I doubt if that is the issue in Montana but it is sure as heck an issue here in Philly and other cities across the Commonwealth.
@Lefthalfbach
If by "civilized society" you mean government, then I have to disagree with you. A government's role in regards to education should be to ensure that public schools, schools under their control, are adequately educating kids. If some, or all, public schools are failing their students, the government should work to improve them, either through increased funding, or by changing the educational approach.
What they should not do is take money that could be invested in public schools and use it for private schools. If someone else wants to create an alternate school, they can, and anyone who wants to go there should not get financial assistance paid for by the tax payers. It boggles my mind that our government provides billions of dollars in financial assistance to private schools while not providing adequate funding to public schools.
TLDR: The "civilized society" could just fix the public schools instead.
1
My experience with the Catholic influence in Latin America and the Muslim influence in the Middle East is that these places have worse economies than Northern Europe that has less religious emphasis.
Correlation is not causation.
On the other hand, the cause of being more religious could also be the cause of worse economies.
In the US, we see the rise of evangelicals in politics these last 30 years also correlates to our increase in economic inequality.
2
@Independent: Prayer is futile and reinforces sense of helplessness. It is paralytic in a crisis.
Perceived public school inferiority shouldn't be an argument for state funding of private education. It should make the opposite point that the real societal good would be improving schools available to everyone.
With at least three justices the product of Roman Catholic secondary education this Court is not in the position to be objective.
Worse, here's an early example showing why it's a terrible idea to have two justices just a class or two apart at the same high school. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh attended Georgetown Prep, an expensive Washington-area Jesuit school.
The way it approached teaching about the First Amendment and tax money for religion-associated schools (parochial and independent) was almost certainly different from the approaches of local Protestant-affiliated private schools.
These featured a wide range themselves. At St. Albans/National Cathedral (Episcopalian), my siblings learned about disestablishment implications and sort of a noblesse oblige duty to provide public education. At Sidwell Friends (Quaker) we were taught that freedom of conscience cannot coexist with any government funding of any religious expression.
Georgetown Prep was founded soon after the colony founded as a Catholic refuge. It has experienced aspects of these issues almost as long as there have been such issues.
It may be a worthwhile background for a justice considering them, but seems over represented with two of the nine.
2
@grennan
...meant soon after the colony ratified the constitution to become a state.
@grennan: We all knew beery fringe jocks like Kavanaugh. Now Georgetown University struggles with the reparations issue of selling slaves to raise money.
Ms. Greenhouse writes "Religious Education serves a purpose, inculcating religious values and preserving religious traditions. A parochial school is not just another neighborhood school down the block."
A religious school's primary goal is not to inculcate religious values, that comes from the home. It's main objective is to transmit social values and a connection to a tradition.
Unfortunately this article portrays it as anathema to what we should transmit our children.
The vouchers is not a request for a free ride. Families that send their children to religious pay taxes to support the public-schools. All they are asking for is some relief from the burden of paying for their children's education when they are already paying to support public education.
@David Dolinger The government is obligated to allow people to practice their religion, and to not grant any religious establishment any special consideration. These schools aren't divided equally among the religious groups in the U.S. Like the article mentions, there are states like Montana who only have Christian private schools. By providing public funding for people attending those schools, the government is indirectly prioritizing their religion over others. That's granting a religious establishment special consideration. If parents want to send their kids to a religious school, that's their right, but the government shouldn't be allowed to provide financial assistance to them.
@David Dolinger
That's what they willingly signed up for when they decided to put junior in a religious school,so don't ask others to bear the burden they volunteered for.
1
@David Dolinger
I don't know what school you went to, but I attended 12 years of Catholic school. All they did was teach Catholic dogma in every class, whether math or history, etc.
I will give you an example of my 8th grade class on 20th century modern history.
The Nun put on the blackboard the following letters - CHRIST.
Then she asked us what each letter stood for. This is what CHRIST stood for.
C-Churchll; H-Hitler; R-Roosevelt; I-Ill Duce; S-Stalin;; T-Tito. She explained to us that Christ has made sure they did not survive as they were responsible for WW11.
Another Religious teaching in a History class . Our Religious classes were two hours of the day. Plus Mass every morning and Confession every Friday.
Religious School are nothing but Religious oriented education.
2
I've long held on to a cherished dream of opening a school, preK-12, and serving the progressive families in my city and county. I'd like to liaison with the local college of education and bring in fresh, excited, young educators for internships and possible future employment. Whatever the voucher amount, will be the cost of tuition, including breakfast, lunch, wellness-care, and after school programs. The school will promote a green learning environment. Children will learn to read, think, write, reason, observe, and make sense of their world, based on verifiable facts. The only fantasy stories they'll read are those they pick up in the library. Our mascot will be the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
If religious groups open the door ti private school funding, I am thrilled to provide an alternative to religious education. This is a battle I choose.
5
Term limts for the court, too much politics, too little jurisprudence.
6
For all those who want the Court to further erode the 1st Amendment in favor of subsidizing religion, remember this: When religious institutions get more support from government (especially monetary support), you can be sure some religions will want to exert more power than other religions to get more from government.
To be blunt, do you want a government in which my religion is considered better than yours?
If you don't think the Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. won't fight hard to be the "first among equals" to exert influence over our federal government, you don't know human nature.
No doubt a fight over funding will have one religion claiming its free exercise is being infringed upon by government's giving too much support to another religion.
Just what government needs, more special interests feeding at the public trough.
A state religion is something our Constitution is supposed to prevent, so, too bad, all religions should not get this type of taxpayer money. The Court should stay out of this mess.
7
I would think that every religious based school could come up with better ways to get students. Like praying for funds? They use prayer for every other solution they offer others. Just pray harder till the funds flow.
But those means should not be with public funds, unless they stick to a more secular teaching, especially in the science rooms. No Intelligent Design, unless Evolution is presented and in full...not some extremely watered down version. Teach sexual health, and not simply abstinence. Teach about the truth of history and world events, and not propaganda that is Pro-xtian, like what is presented by most xtians re; the Crusades.
4
@Boregard - "Like praying for funds?"
Or they could just send some "seed money" to Joel Olsteen.
1
I pose a question about what Ms. Greenhouse believes is special treatment in this case. If I can be fired for my political beliefs, how can I get legal relief for being fired for any other reason?
May parents who wind up using the voucher programs to send their kids to private schools are doing so b/c they live in neighborhoods with horrible public schools and they can’t afford to pay the price of private schools. Many private schools happen to be affiliated with a religion. We should give those kids a chance.
1
@Lj, yes, we should give those kids a chance---by giving them good, well-supported public schools.
Religion may save their souls, but a good education in civics and the general welfare will provide them with equal financial opportunity, equality under the law, and their best chance of escaping the poverty into which they were born.
And we all need them to have those advantages. That's why we all need to put all the money available for education into schools that are open to all and whose primary educational goal is to produce literate, productive, and politically participating citizens.
1
@Lj We'd also be giving them a chance if the government took the money they were using to provide these vouchers and invested them in public schools instead. If our public schools are underfunded, why does the government insist on spending money on vouchers for private schools?
Aren't these the same people who brand anyone not of their persuasion who wants to help others with government funding "socialists"? Why is what they are asking for not socialism?
10
The real point of these types of lawsuits is to chip away at the definition of separation of church and state in the USA and eventually make theocracy acceptable to the masses.
Evangelicals are well-organized, centrally focused on just a few issues (abortion, "religious freedom") and they turn out reliably to vote and contribute to political campaigns. This makes them the perfect foil to secularism and science - ironically, the tools we'll need to survive for the rest of this century.
The scariest part is how many of the Dominionist crowd have inserted themselves into this administration. I glimpsed the beginning of this at uncounted Amway rallies in the early 1980s, and it's surprising how many of the DeVos and VanAndel families and their acolytes are involved in this administration.
When you're convinced the end times are near (spoiler alert: they're ALWAYS near!) you'll do anything to remain in power just long enough to guarantee you'll be raptured. Even better, why not accelerate the process? Move our embassy to Jerusalem, tout a fake Mideast peace agreement that ignores one of the aggrieved parties, and maybe even toss a few drone-based missiles at Iran.
6
If the Supreme Court decides to take my money and force me to contribute to the Church, I will quit paying my taxes.
Forcing me to contribute money to a religious school is the establishment of a state religion. Period. And I am not going to tolerate that.
7
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas and Roberts will find a way vote for government sponsored church schools.
If a rube like me can predict with accuracy how each justice will vote on a case before they even hear it, can we sustain the myth that in cases with social content the prejudices of the justices are not determinate? Can we say they are just umpires calling balls and strikes?
Pack that Court, frequently and at length.
6
In many states it is property owners paying the majority of educational costs. Why should our taxes increase for an industry that is tax exempt? An industry that is worth billions! Why should we have to pay for these people putting their kids in private schools? Basically, they're demanding we pay for their religious lifestyle. Pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps! Want your kid in a private school? Pay for it yourselves!
15
Just another decision to placate the wacko e-vans who just can't grasp Separation of Church and State. I don't want my taxes going to fund tax-free churches' education programs. If you don't want a public school education for your children, then send them to a religious school, but DON'T expect me to pay for it.
6
Foreign influence in our elections? [shrug]
Contemporary manifestations of Jim Crow? [shrug]
An executive branch beyond Congressional oversight? [shrug]
Certainly separation of church and state is important, but have we ever considered that maybe we can just shrug it off?
1
My favorite commercial on TV is Ron Reagan's promo for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The founding fathers produced an astoundingly efficient document. Five Catholic men sitting on SCOTUS should not be able to upset the status quo.
5
Wait till Trump gets re-elected ,immediately Ruth Ginsburg will retire she is holding on in hopes of a Democrat 6/4
Before Trumps second term ends 7/3 welcome to the 1950’s
1
@independent voter
It will be more like the 30’s because I’m sure Social Security will be history, too!
4
Just another sad data point in the devolution of the hopes of our country's founding fathers. Anti-science, anti-facts, anti-freedom "from" religion - when will it end? (November 3 would be a good start...)
3
How is it that these arguments are receiving an audience in these relatively more secular times? When I went to school in the 60's, "the good old days" that religious conservatives like to hark back to, it was universally accepted that public school was for general education. It was that way when my parents attended public school in the 40s, and when my grandparents went to school in the 10s and 20s. Everyone received their religious education and learned their religious traditions at home and at synagogue on Saturday, or church on Sunday. People were not clamoring for public tax dollars to be spent on religious instruction as the consensus was that it was indeed a violation of church and state. Very strange times we are living in.
6
@Retired: Rollovers of millennia seem to make people nutty. Europe spent about a century doing little but wait for the world to end the last time it happened.
Parents already pay taxes to support the public schools, whether property tax directly or indirectly through rent. The public money that would be spent on private school grants/tuition aid grants is coming from tax dollars they paid. The parents are given that funding to spend on a private school they choose, religious or secular. The state is not choosing the school. I have no problem whatsoever with such a policy. I hope the Supreme Court rules in their favor.
1
@Bookworm so what that they pay their taxes and are not using the public school system. I too pay my taxes but don’t have children. I don’t use the playgrounds either. It’s the price we all pay for society to function.
10
@Bookworm8571: People who are not parents pay taxes for public schools. I am disgusted that this money is spent to ratify infantile religious beliefs that put a full stop to learning.
Is anyone actually surprised?
Our constitution and our democracy are eroding by the hour.
10
It's never been clear to me in the SCOTUS ruling on Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer: Since public funds are used to up-grade and maintain the church's playground, do all of the taxpayers who's wallets are being tapped for this playground get equal access to this playground?
I hope someone out there can answer this question. I'll be checking back from time to time in the hope of an answer.
3
I want to thank once again the Bernie bros, Jill Stein voters, and "progressives" who just couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because she wasn't pure enough for helping to elect Donald Trump and give him two right-wing, activist Supreme Court Justice picks. We are now stuck with this Court for at least a generation. Other federal courts are also being packed by right-wing activist judges picked by the Federalist Society. This case will be a pay-off for the right-wing "Christians" for supporting Trump. We can expect more and more cases paying off the big corporations, top 1%, fossil fuel industries, and the rest of the Republican bank-rollers.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that some voters haven't learned a lesson from 2016. I hope I'm wrong. The next election may decide who picks future Justices and other judges.
21
@jas2200 great post. let's also thank the above for the looming medicare and social security cuts that will surely be coming to offset the deficits generated by the tax cuts for corporations.
4
@jas2200
You forget the Nader/Stein voters who help put bush2 in office because Al Gore wasn't liberal enough for them.Nader bragged afterwards about how he was able to thwart Gore from being president.The Greens poured all their funding into Fla and NH.Had Gore won either state he'd of won.I still believe that Stein is in the employ of the GOP or Putin.
1
@karen
We all should be blaming the Electoral College
2
Freedom of Religion always meant to me that that a person can go to whatever services they want to go to and the government cannot interfere in that choice. Now this case wants to pretend that people can't freely practice their religion unless they have the financial support of non-believers.
This case should be open and shut. The government may not compel a non-believer to pay a religious institution which is what is being asked for.
11
So, when funding for public schools is directed to religious schools, and then the public schools cannot maintain even the barest of standards, the taxpayers who either do not practice religion, or practice a religion that is without a school, will be forced to send their children to the religious school teaching things the taxpayer does not believe is true.
Wouldn't it be ironic if this happened in such a way that people who thought this would help indoctrinate children into their beliefs, were actually forced to send their children to a school that indoctrinated their child in a totally different belief?
Sounds like a shaky plot to me, but them I'm just an everyday Christian, not an Evangelical.
I believe in a secular education in school, where children are already busy beyond belief. I'll concentrate on teaching my my Christian values to my children in my home and in my life.. by how I live.
13
@JW: Public school teaches what to expect out here at one's own socioeconomic level.
A voucher should follow the kid, as long as the school is accredited (or if the homeschooling is meeting state standards).
There has already been a case about this, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, where the state (Missouri) was giving every school money to rebuild playgrounds. The state discriminated against religious schools by denying them the same allotment that every other school was receiving, solely due to the religious preferences of the school & students.
Think about it this way, could the Feds take away my tax credits if I intended to donate the money saved to a church? Of course not. Money is miscible.
1
@James: It is bad public policy to subsidize insularity. In its more extreme forms, religious schooling graduates people incapable of transitioning to secular life.
3
I'm not understanding how this cause is congruent with "libertarian" values? I thought libertarians want fewer government programs, not a new program to subsidize private schools.
2
@Ted But in cases where there are government funds (money going to education), they don't want discrimination as to where the money flows.
Libertarian: The parents of all students pay for the tuition of the school they select, taxes are reduced and state doesn't fund education.
Libertarian: State taxes people for education, allows the money to follow each kid to whatever school they choose (note, it is still libertarian for states to have standards on education).
Libertarian: Homeschooling parents can receive tax dollars that otherwise were allocated to their kids.
Non-Libertarian: We tax you as we like, tell you what schools your kids can attend, and if you dare question us we crush you.
1
The problem with your argument is that Montana is not discriminating against religious schools. It’s treating all private schools the same way by ending the program.
Is your position that Montana be forced to reopen this program? That seems like government intrusion from on high.
1
Based on my experience of having had kids in a Catholic school, I can say confidently that the primary purpose of the Catholic school system is to indoctrinate children into conservative Catholic beliefs. In other words, they want to make them all Trump followers (fortunately, it often doesn't work). It's bad enough that I already subsidize churches by virtue of their exemption from property taxes. It is appalling that I might also be forced to pay for indoctrinating children in Catholic dogma through my taxes. What we need is a Democratic President and Congress with the courage to create two or four new positions on the Supreme Court and get these terrible decisions reversed.
6
@Jeff Hannig You fail to appreciate that the Catholic Church basically invented universal education, predating the first public school by a few hundred years (even after the ratification of the Constitution).
Churches pre-dated the government in providing education, social services (adoption, foster care, etc), and health care. It is the government that is the Johny-come-lately.
1
@Jeff Hannig: The sheer gall of the Supreme Court to refuse to face up to what "an establishment of religion" means caps my contempt for a court system run as an extortion racket for liars like Trump's impeachment lawyers.
I see a ton of discussion about the 1st amendment, but I’m looking to the 14th:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which...den[ies] to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
This is the law that equal education and education oversight is based on. Does the Supreme Court really have any real business here as it relates to this case? Not in the manner they’re going about it, IMHO.
But, either way, if US public tax dollars are being diverted toward private and/or religious schools, it obviously stands to reason that those schools will need to do everything public schools do to earn those dollars. Submit to curriculum oversight, perform standardized testing, institute inclusive lunch programs, obtain the same staff accreditation, and on and on...
And the biggie, they should also obviously have to—at least at the school level—relinquish their tax exempt status to pay the government for its role in ensuring each child is getting equal protection under the law.
9
@Mason Bridge: The "Commerce Clause" is the other hot-button Constitutional issue of the day. The US states are at cultural war with each other with unequal laws state to state. The Republicans deny that Congress has the power to level the protection of law of all of the states via the Commerce clause, but it does, because everything has economic implications.
I don't get it. If religious groups want to be part of programs that would otherwise have general applicability -- let's say cash for playground improvements or vouchers -- shouldn't they also be subject to other laws of general applicability -- like, say, providing contraceptives as part of a health plan? Or, shockingly, do they just want the parts of the system that they agree with and work with their ideology?
14
@Brian ..and, of course, pay federal and state taxes...and be subject to all state laws and paperwork...and be required not to discriminate in admissions in any way...
6
@Brian
Why, I think you’ve nailed the Trump on the head.
1
This issue also exposes those who argue for state's rights, that states should be free of federal rules and mandates as much as possible. Except when it is something they want to impose -- and many religions are about imposing their views and rules on others.
7
This is simple, these schools are private, not public. Those people who can afford to send their kids to a private school for indoctrination, just want to use public money for their private school. Let’s face it, private school is usually a higher grade education smaller classes etc, which means that teachers don’t have 40 plus kids stuffed in a classroom built for 25 students. This is nothing more than the affluent wanting access to more “free money” of course at taxpayer expense.
It’s also worth noting, that the Montana constitution uses a similar article as the U.S. constitution, the U.S. article is often referred to as the establishment clause. Religion is a private institution that should be supported by those who want to indoctrinate their kids into a specific way of thinking (as someone that went to private school, it’s indoctrination plain and simple) it’s not up to the public to support them.
Maybe we need to raise taxes for the rich, very rich, super rich, and corporations so that we can restore money to our public school system to bring it to the same level of quality that private schools enjoy. Politicians have been taking money out of public education that we are producing barely literate adults. We still educate our kids form 50 year old text books, we don’t stress math, sciences, computer technologies, we don’t have shop classes anymore, not everyone wants to sit at a desk, we need carpenters, Plummer’s, electricians, you know the trades.
4
@James: "Establishment" is an ontological process to develop a belief. Newton's law of Gravity and Einstein's refinements to it establishments of physics. Faith-based beliefs are establishments of religion. The Establishment Clause is obviously a blanket prohibition of legislation that gives force of law to beliefs held only faith or unproven hypothesis.
@James The quality of the education is not an issue here.
But I will go on the record as follows: the right wing fundamentalist christian churches do not teach evolution or basic biology and certainly avoid climate change, mainstream literature, and unbiased coverage of our country's government and history. The Catholic schools (with a few exceptions) do not have better outcomes than mainstream public schools. The Orthodox Jewish schools in NY are turning out illiterate men, and women who are subservient to those men, who in turn generate more babies than any family can handle, which is why many require welfare to survive,
It appears to me that various misleading and deceitful arguments have been employed over the years to use public money to fund private and religious schools. One source of this thinking has been the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in DC with a clearly religious agenda and considerable influence within the GOP.
Where will this thinking and type of legislation lead us? Perhaps we are on the way to some of the thinking and practices of Germany or other European states. Tax dollars go to churches. In Germany the Lutheran and Catholic churches are funneled tax monies with the provision that these institutions provide social services to the needy public. The tax is known as the German Church Tax. In the past in the USA some states have established a state religion. Are we headed back in that direction? I fear some of the unintended consequences of blurring the lines between church and state.
9
Thank you, Linda Greenhouse.
And note: Republican appointments to the Supreme Court have all been Roman Catholics by religion - Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch (raised Catholic, nominally Episcopalian), Justices Roberts and Alito, Thomas.
Thus, a majority of appointees opposed to abortion, and in favor of religious education. It's an obvious and deeply regrettable bias, even to Catholic friends of mine.
14
Espinoza could allow religious practitioners to receive all benefits of citizenship without duties, including paying taxes and abiding by legislation governing others. Religion seeks to be a predator animal in the woods hunting and eating non-religious young and old who enter their territory. All pay the price. Only religious schools benefit. That is not a fair definition of religious neutrality, no matter what untruthful advocates argue to the Supreme Court. That gruesome definition builds government-paid theocracy. The United States has practiced religious neutrality for hundreds of years, allowing practitioners freedom and benefit by choice to practice. Espinoza tears down that fairness.
Libertarians’ arguments quash the views of any libertarians who are interested in life outside libertarianism, for example freely practicing any religion without interference from other religions or from government. That narrow libertarianism would create chaos which harms everyone wishing for freedom. This perceptive column sets forth the truth that libertarians and religious practitioners want governments to boost their own interests but want to limit freedom for competing interests. The Supreme Court is on the verge of doling treatment of special interests unfairly into conflicts and controversies with other special interests, encouraging chaos.
4
It's not freedom of religion if my tax money goes to support a religious school I do not believe in.
If it can be argued, as it has been on the right, that I do not have to pay my union dues if I don't believe in unions, and if it can be argued that my taxes should not support women's health care if I'm "pro-life", then why in the world is it so hard to argue this one?
12
Excellent analogy!
1
Spot on opinion. Let's be clear: religious schools receive a huge amount of funding from the government already, so the issue is not whether religious schools can receive funding. They receive billions.
The issue is whether religious schools deserve special treatment so that they don't have to follow rules that come with funding. Why should one group be exempt from rules that everyone has to follow? Are my beliefs worth less than those of a religious person? The scary answer seems to be that they believe themselves to be better than others and entitled/deserving of more.
14
The self-professed Fiscally Responsible couldn't resist a constituent-pleasing give-away; and The Voucher was born. Undermining a unionized public institution was certainly in-step with party goals to end their Less Popular position in polling on Education. No tears were shed for the teaching professionals nor for America's most-noteworthy embodiment of democracy in a public institution. "Voucher equals Winning" is the math.
Public fervor is not in short supply for the growth industry of newly entitled religious and commercial businesses. Seemingly, a "conservatively" bent Court will ignore the Montanians' legislated pull-back from public funding of private institutions. In a cake-baking artist replay, "We tell you - what prevails" is the lesson.
Call THEM the activist judges for overruling the state's self-determination through legislated changes. They deserve infamy. They ensure that the commoditization of public education IS NOT THWARTED by the will of The People through their representatives.
4
While this interpretation that the Supreme Court 's Collapsing Center on Religion that school vouchers threaten this separation may hold some validity, the spirit and actions on display by the House Impeachment Managers are not only abusing the Constitution but many of the premises the Constitution is built on beginning with the presumption of innocence and that a person is guilty if they do not provide the House Impeachment with evidence.
1
@MDCooks8: Getting born is "original sin". You only have to live once.
How can religious organizations argue that they should receive public funds through school choice vouchers, and at the same time that their property and earnings should be exempt from taxation? Equal treatment cuts both ways.
15
@Lindsey: The US has accorded special status to organizations that propagate opinions about what a hypothetical being called "God" thinks that legitimizes these opinions and ratifies their inflexibility.
It is not, though, "discrimination against religious exercise," but rather refusal to fund that exercise. The parents are still free to send their kid to a religious school. Some might say that some parents cannot afford it without help. Fine, but that does not mean that the taxpayers must fund it. Those same parents might not be able to afford a home in the best neighborhood, to send their kid to sports camp or to buy their kid's clothes at Niemann Marcus, either, but no one is suggesting that it should, therefore, be taxpayer funded...
It often seems that one tactic of the religious right is to muddy the waters. Here that is between "exercise" of religion and funding for that exercise. With school prayer it is between a student's right to pray (always there) and school endorsement of religion, e.g., teacher leading the class in prayer, prayer over the public address system etc. They apparently are also pretending that providing federal funds for a playground surface (not religious even in a religious school) and funding the school's mission, e.g., religion-based education of pupils are one and the same. Clearly they are not.
13
@Anne Marie Hislop
If people can’t afford to send their kids to a private school, and can’t afford it, they have a choice, get a second job, or a better paying job, but don’t expect public money. Remember these religious fanatics are the ones driving the work for Medicaid garbage, these people forget, this is taxpayers money, and we deserve some return on OUR investment in this country.
They want to tell you, sure your sick, but get out and get a job anyway, food, who needs it, only the rich should become accustomed to eating....regular, end their food stamps, they don’t even care that reducing food stamps hurts kids in red states they are the poorest states, West Virginia, the poorest state, full of republicans that don’t care one iota for their poor. They care about bible thumping, guns.
As the article states, ALL the private religious schools in Montana are Christian. How do those supporting public funding for religious education feel about their tax dollars supporting religious education that is NOT Christian? Take NJ or Michigan for example, those states have large enough non-Christian populations to have Muslim and Jewish schools that will be funded by tax dollars. Once the door is open, any private school of any religious persuasion can receive those funds. I suspect that the most fervent supporters might feel differently about their tax dollars going to Madrassas.
9
this sounds like a case of wanting their cake and eating to too. many other religious groups privately fund their own educational systems through tuition and church donations, the net effect is that the parent are paying for their childrens' education twice. if the religious right wants gov't. funding for their schools, they should be forced to give up their tax exempt status.
11
@Steve: Public schools can weave the role of religion into history classes, but school has one immutable prime directive: It is not productive to hold beliefs without substantiation. If a hypothesis cannot be tested, it is a pipe dream.
@Steve Bolger
Amen, and I’m not even religious. But your correct, those parents that wish to indoctrinate their kids into the idea that something exists but can’t be proven, tougher, smelled, not to mention even the stories in the Bible have been debunked. The earth wasn’t created in 6 days, (since the seventh is left for the hangover from universe building) evidence proves it, sorry but the dinosaurs didn’t roam the earth for 2 million years, in 6 days, sorry but the math doesn’t work. Religion has been used to control the masses, to try and explain the natural world around them. The Greeks believed that giants roamed the earth because they found dinosaur bones, 2,500 years ago, that was probably a logical conclusion.
No if they want to send their kids to a “private school” they should be prepared to pay it themselves, and it’s very expensive.
Enough with this insanity, it just never ends, with these religious people. You have these kids pay for their education in a private religious school. My kids go to public school why do I need to pay for your darlings.? Your the parent take care of your own religious issues with your children. PAY for IT. I want my kids to take ice skating lessons, I pay for it.
Tired of listening to these holier than thou religious people who are far from religious with all there hate.
15
I am looking forward that moment when the Satanic Temple opens a school and cashes its first taxpayer-funded tuition check. Or a school based in Sharia law.
11
Get ready for officially sanctioned, tax-payer funded, Christian madrassas coming to your neighborhood in the near future....freedom of speech!
3
Unless the non-voting and 3rd party voting "progressives' clean their tri-focals and get some common sense, we're going down, as a viable, affluent nation.
The so-called independents are 50% okay and 50% really stupid, and therefore have no net effect over time at the ballot box.
2
If government money pays for religious education, then the government is choosing to support that religion in contravention of the first amendment. The legal case really is that simple.
10
@Ken
It sure is, I pointed out that Montana’s constitution uses a similar clause as the U.S. constitution does, commonly referred to as the establishment clause.
Why should my tax dollars, meant for public schools, go to private schools (religious or otherwise?)
This is without question Government support of religious institutions and is unconstitutional. Period.
12
Essentially if we regard these state stipends as a grant given directly to the child for his/her educational expenses and not as a grant to the institution controlling that education, would that strengthen the notion that we are not pushing any specific religion. On the other hand, to be fair to the child receiving this "education" , should we also at the same time give the state the right to oversee and regulate the education being given to make certain that we are not encouraging a cult that deprives the child the opportunity of succeeding in our current world. If we produce a religious individual who is ignorant of secular skills but is proficient in religious ritual ---have we really contributed to his/her intellectual growth? Am I condemning the child to a life of poverty and dependence , if I do not make certain that the education received also provides an understanding of how the world actually works---secular skills with computer and STEM understandings , an unbiased view of humanistic subjects and fluency in language and literature ---an education that allows the individual to earn a living and enjoy the culture in addition to gaining values from the religion.
1
If the decision is that states must provide financial support to parents who place their children in a religious school, the question then becomes, how much?
When I worked for the Oregon Department of Education, our office distributed the state school support money to public school districts at about $5,000 per student. That was fifteen years ago, and it's probably more than that now.
Would the next step in this effort be to fund children in private religious schools at the same rate, using public dollars, as children in public schools?
If so, I can imagine that the state would argue that in return for the dollars, private religious schools must comply with all state standards, such as teacher licensing, curriculum standards, special education laws and rules, and graduation requirements, to name a few topics.
Then we would hear the counter-argument that the state enforcing these standards would be an interference with religious freedom.
And if the Supreme Court swallows the funding argument, it would certainly go along with the standards argument.
8
As someone who went to a religious school I must present a moderate defense. First, it is true that public schools need extra funding and I hope that no one disagrees with the need for a strong public system. As well, it is important that certain education standards are upheld and mandatory state or national testing should facilitate this. This includes limits on how much religious instruction can take place (e.g. no indoctrination).
However, should all of my tax dollars be spent on other children and none on my own? Surely a voucher for part of the education costs is an acceptable compromise? All students need to learn reading and writing so why can there not be some choice in where children are sent for that?
2
@Geoff You don't want to spend your money on "other children". What about those of us who have no children? Based on your thinking, we should get a "refund voucher". We all support public education because it promotes the common good. And why should I subsidize religious organizations run antithetical to my beliefs? We all do through their tax exempt status, and I resent it.
8
@Geoff: I never had children, therefore all of my school tax money went to other people’s children and not to my own. I don’t get a government rebate for that.
The reason for school taxes is to create an educated, employable populace, not to educate one’s own children.
Parents are free to pay to send their children to any school they choose, but all of us must still pay for the public educational system.
10
@Geoff
Private schools are indoctrination centers, that’s why parents send them there, because religious indoctrination isn’t something that’s on a public schools curriculum, nor should it be. If I want to indoctrinate my kids into some religious belief founded in a fantasy. I know where to take them, it’s called a church, might be a novel concept to those wanting tax payers to foot their high end education. By the way, what will happen, States will do exactly what Montana did, then nobody gets the money.
1
As someone who has attended a religion based school, I can tell you that there is a lot of indoctrination going on in them, probably all of them. Taxpayer money should not be used for the indoctrination of children into religious beliefs. I wonder if these people would feel the same way about Muslim schools or Hindu schools or Atheist schools.
11
I just wanted to point out that the entire conservative way is to defund general programs that help the “wrong people” along with whites.
When courts said cities couldn’t segregate pools, they filled them in. When religion could not be taught in public schools, they voted down taxes. When whites got the idea that welfare had a dark face, they were against it. When Muslims or gays wanted to use rooms in public buildings that Christians had used for years without complaints, the public uses ended.
All legal as non discrimination because no group was preferred over another. All repeated across thousands of governments.
But now Montana can’t end a program of general application because most of the benefits go to Our Kind and not Their Kind.
6
Well, we're getting the rightwing religious state the non-voting liberals in the country have evidently embraced. Bit by bit, we're losing the environment, the national integrity, and soon ven the appearance of affluence.
Why? The non-voting or 3rd party voting liberal demographic.
[a ridiculous dysfunctional 'electoral college' helps of course]
3
@Feldman
Funny I’m an independent, but oddly I’ve voted since I was 18, at 55 that a lot of voting. You are now free to go back to laboring under the delusion that independents don’t vote.
@James I did not imply independents do not vote. They vote [but generally neutralizing each other].
But I have criticized non-voting decided liberals and progressives. Far too many of them have created valid reasons for either staying home or voting for 3rd party candidates if they vote at all -- a practice that has all but guaranteed conservative leadership.
Gore lost Fla. by a handful of votes, while Ralph Nader picked up 100,000 votes in Fla., in 2000 -- resulting in a GW Bush presidency and the disgusting destruction of Iraq and everything downstream from there.
But thank you for voting James, and I wish you well for doing so.
Will it hurt the people of Montana to support religious private schools with school vouchers? I do not think so. Many inner city parents prefer these schools because they teach values, discipline and do actually teach subject matter to children. The quality of public schools is inferior and children do not often learn. I support religious and non religious private education and hope these parents win this case.
36
@KMW
There is no "inner city" in Montana. All of the cities are small and the public education is frankly strong.
The private religious schools, predominantly Catholic, simply want to get their paws on public funds.
Well, in many ways they already have. They get significant tax breaks for these so called charitable institutions and then stick their noses into politics, in effect using taxpayer benefits to promote their agenda.
More often than not, private Catholic schools in Montana are well behind public schools and are far inferior.
167
@KMW
I do hope your support extends to all forms of religious education, be it Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or athiest, not to mention all forms of "self-declared" religions.
It will be really interesting to see how this principle will be applied equally to all forms of "religious education".
114
@Texas Duck Catholics are very different nowadays, from community to community, conservative to moderate. The Church once opposed receiving tax dollars because it did not want to be "dictated to", and I know Pope Francis feels this way. The Catholic schools here are excellent, teach evolution etc, and don't ask for tax dollars. I've noticed Catholics grow more different from each other ever year now.
29
I have been deliberating with myself for years whether in balance religion has done more good or more evil in the history of the world. I’m usually inclined to believe that the latter is the correct answer. But in any case, moral analysis aside, there is a reason that the authors of the constitution explicitly mandated that religion should be kept separate from the civilian government of this country: they had in their close collective memories the experience of hundreds of years of brutal religious warfare throughout England and continental Europe. If only Americans read history. They might learn something. But alas, that is not the case.
6
@Freestyler: When people attribute a belief to God, it becomes non-negotiable.
3
So if the Supreme Court decides in favor of allowing vouchers for religious schools, parents of children attending Islamic schools would be among those eligible, correct? Looking forward to the time that starts to happen.
5
The "center" collapsed in 2011 in ACTO v. Winn.
The results oriented judicial activism of the court's 5-4 majority abandoned any pretense that funding religious education was not consistent with the Constitution.
I am tired of hearing about religious freedom.
The Founding Fathers were clear on the need for a wall between the church and the state.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
It is no accident that the first statement guarantees the freedom FROM religion. That was their primary concern. They wanted to avoid what was generally accepted in Great Britain and Europe, where the church dictated the laws. The King of England was also the head of the Anglican Church.
The second statement of the First Amendment is the logical successor to the first. The government can't tell you what religion you must follow, so you are free to follow whatever religion you want. It cannot work the other way round. Once the government removes that wall of separation, they become an adjunct to a religion, in this case, Christianity.
This goes against everything that the framers of the Constitutions established, regardless of whatever their personal beliefs or practices were. They understood that to be a nation of free and equal people, the government could not be a partner to any religion. Once a preference is chosen, all others become lesser or unequal.
8
I can see no way the present supreme court and the concept of fair play go together except as opposites.
5
I think public policy that motivates civic improvement associations, clubs, etc. to do beneficial work for the community in lieu of paying taxes on their facilities is a good idea, but I don't favor it to legitimize anyone's religious evangelism.
2
You do not have to be an atheist to be very cautious of blurring the lines between church and state. What Christians (yes, it's Christians) do not understand is that this separation protects them as well. Do you want the government dictating what version of Christian you are? With separation in place we are all free to practice any version of any belief that is right for us, yet with the government giving preference to one kind of belief over another, we all lose some religious freedom. What Christians are pushing for is not religious freedom but religious preference. That seems like a good idea to them now, but will become less attractive over time when even what they believe becomes warped and oppressive in government hands. The short-sightedness of those who vote only out of their own self-interest never ceases to astonish me.
11
As inner city schools fail to deliver and as professional educators more and more politicize the public schools. parents are entitled to spend their own tax money on private, including religious, alternative schools.
As the election of Trump demonstrated, a lot of us have had enough.
1
@Observer But my money is subsidizing these religious organizations through their tax exempt status. It's time to end that.
4
@Observer
Tell me exactly which professional educators are more and more politicizing the public schools? Which inner city schools are failing to deliver? I need more details. I will agree that parents must pay their taxes but, they are not entitled to spend my tax dollars on their private, religious or alternative schools. Spend your own money if you want those schools. You are right that the election of Trump has demonstrated that a lot of us have had enough. Enough of Trump, I can't wait to vote on Nov. 3, 2020. VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO!!!
2
The Democrats bravely decided in the 1960s to enforce Brown v. Board. The white middle class reacted by forming a coalition with plutocrats in the GOP to withdraw support from public education, gradually in most areas, dramatically in the South. The coalition still exists, still controls most states, and retains tenuous control at the federal level, which it wields with increasing ferocity and brutality. It is now in a position to enforce the starvation of public education though interpretations of the Constitution made by Supreme Court justices who sympathize with the desire of the coalition, whose backbone is the approximately 60% of white people who, like the aforementioned justices, want to minimize funding for programs that help people who aren’t white. The quality of public education has suffered and will suffer more, along with many other beneficial programs, as SCOTUS works its way through an agenda favoring the mostly white coalition.
5
@Maggie
Dixiecrats were not Democrats, and cooperating with them is a stain on the Democratic record.
Religious freedom is but one of the gaslighting, propagandist ploys of the evangelical right.
They have a persecution complex, incarnated by Trump, and are being persecuted all the way to the bank.
Shameful ... but they have no shame.
15
The Supreme Court lost any legitimacy that it may have had when the Republicans refused to even have a hearing on Obama's nominee. What sits in its stead is a court that is has been stacked with right-wing fringe political hacks as judges that have no interest in justice only in propagating the racist religious conservative republican party line. A 5-4 opinion doesn't set president and every case that is decided in this manner will undergo review again when legitimacy is restored to the court. Until such time the Robert's Supreme Court is just wasting everyone's time and wasting paper.
14
If tax funds go religious schools, then these schools need to share their science curricula with the public.
8
America used to be fine example of a secular state. Our descent toward fundamentalism is appalling--horrifying for anyone not a fundamental Christian.
15
Since Republicans in government are quite happy to throw out parts of the Constitution that aren't favorable to old, Christian white guys, I see only consistency should the Conservatives of the Supreme Court decide to take another swipe at the Bill of Rights. I think what's next after the institution of Christianity as the National Religion will be the elimination of the freedom of the press. Pompeo's banning of the NPR reporter is one of the baby steps. Don't look for ANY Republican to defend most of what the Founding Fathers fought for. We will need to fight again, ourselves. Otherwise, fascism here we come!
8
It looks like the US is preparing to exit the road to plutocracy at the theocracy junction.
7
What happens if vouchers for food (food stamps) are taken to a store owned by a Church, Christian or otherwise?
1
If a religiously-run store were not submitting to the same taxation, review, procedures, etcetera of all applicable city, county, state, and federal codes/laws that non-religious stores are required to comply with, the vouchers should not apply AND the church store should provide wares to the poor and suffering in accordance with their specific theological holdings.
If the store DOES submit to these codes/laws, vouchers should be acceptable currency for wares AND the store should provide for the poor and suffering where the vouchers fall short in accordance with their specific theological holdings.
American theocracy, coming your way soon.
7
do theocrats think that people like me won't receive our own revelations that exempt us from their control? are they that stupid? yes. I grew up in Alabama...i know.
3
The minute that a Muslim school applies for funds, these same people will fall all over themselves shouting, separation of church and state. And then, of course, we'll need some sort of state mechanism to determine which religious schools deserve such funding and which don't. Somehow it brings to min the Hundred Years War
12
I taught at a Catholic school for a couple of years in the early 90s. One day per week, the local school district parked a van on campus, which was designed to help kids with reading disabilities. Run by a credentialed teacher, I did notice an improvement in the 5 or 6 kids that went to the program. But, because it was on the grounds of a Catholic school. Did that make it illegal under the Establishment Clause? IMHO no; The program was helping kids and should no matter where were. They were kids for gosh sake, some being used as pawns.
1
@Tom, The situation you describe is different. Many states (if not all) require school districts to provide private school students with special services that are available at public schools but rarely offered at the private ones. Those services might include learning evaluations, treatment for learning disabilities etc. Giving vouchers for religious education is another matter all together.
5
For crying out loud, when will these ridiculous claims of "religious freedom" stop??
A parent certainly has the right to send their child to a private religious school. How does it follow that I, the tax payer, have to provide public funds for them to exercise that choice.
They can, like anybody else, choose to send their kids to the public schools provided by our tax dollars.
If they CHOOSE to send their kids elsewhere, then that is their choice and responsibility.
Now, I'm not against religious schools - I graduated from Archbishop Stepinac HS in NY. I AM, however, against the use of public funds to finance religious schools.
We all have free choices - but that doesn't mean we're free of the consequences and responsibilities that flow from our choices.
415
@BlaiseM For most of my 16+ yrs in Catholic schools, I remember opinions stating the Church approved of separation because "we" did not want to be "dictated to by the State". I'm not at all certain that has changed, but there appears to be a lot more dissension between conservative, moderate and liberal Catholics now, from community to community. I'm a bit shocked at what I see in blogs maintained by individual Catholics.
11
@BlaiseM
I'm not religious, but, um... amen!
16
@BlaiseM: Most of what I know about Catholicism was learned from two brothers of your alma mater who lived across the street.
2
My tax dollar should not subsidize anyone attending a private school - whether it is religiously affiliated or not. Free public education is available to everyone - if you want something different, then you need to foot the bill. How you can argue discrimination when no one gets the benefit isn't comprehensible. The creep of inserting religion into public schools is disturbing. There are many avenues for children to get a religious education. I vehemently object to any use of my tax dollar for this effort. Part of the reason for this is that the vision of what kind of "religion" should be taught. Our Founders knew there should be a wall between Church and State with good reason.
9
If they want school vouchers for religious schools, it’s time to tax their churches.
17
In the Detroit area, which has a large Muslim community, I ask my Trumper friends whether they think a madrasa in Dearborn (Muslim majority town nearby) should be eligible for public funding and suddenly they aren't so supportive of sending taxpayer money to religious schools. Can't wait for Kavanagh to try to distinguish between an Islamic school and his alma mater but I'm sure he will. Probably will involve the availability of beer.
11
Evangelicals want a theocracy with their dogma enforced by the State which we now know Trump is the state as King Luis of France said I am the state. Violators of evangelical dogma need to be punished by the state perhaps bring back burning at the stake will be introduced by King DoN THE CON. Also useful to punish dissidents like democrats.
4
So how will these religious groups fighting for tax dollars for their religious schools like to see their taxes go for vouchers for Muslim schools teaching islam? Pretty much any group that claims it is a religion can then start a school and get tax dollars. I don't think this is what the founders had in mind.
6
The Religious Right's campaign for "religious freedom" only applies to conservative Christian freedom (and perhaps Judaism). But let's remember that the wars in the Middle East have been about secular vs. religious "freedom" and the destructive "civil wars" are the equivalent of family feud between the Muslim houses. So just so long as SCOTUS and POTUS are OK preserving the "rights to express the relligious freedoms of all claiming that right, OK (including mosques, KKK houses, etc, all of whom claim to be doing God's will) then, well, OK.
The beauty of the US separation is exactly as Justice Kagan expressed: no discrimination!
4
There is no separation of church and state. Trump thinks he is a God and is the State, and he isn't smart enough not to conflate. Good luck getting rid of him--ever.
1
so a few years back we were pondering enrolling our child in the local lutheran school. We did the open house. The classes had special projects hanging on the wall. In what would have been my son's room the big display i guess from their science class was about how dinosaurs never existed and were all a lie. So i am supposed to pay for the school to lie to my kids??????
8
So here I am a gay man and this thing persists that no matter what, my labor will go towards supporting those who hate me and wish me dead and their efforts to continue to educate children in Bronze Age "ethics".
10
I might consider public funding of religious education when churches and bible thumpers start paying taxes.
9
I wonder if they have considered that if this were to be "blessed" by the SC, that would mean that ALL sorts of organizations could now get public funds for education such as satanists, atheists, freethinkers, even the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarians. It is similar to when christians are allowed to display their beliefs on public property and an atheist organization wants to do the same thing - the christians get in a panic....no, no! We didn't mean allowing those "others"! I must chuckle...
3
There’s a new U.S. Constitution on the way. Nasty, brutish, and short.
5
Religious schools? Good grief! This is 2020, have we learned nothing? Oh, that's right, all our esteemed leaders went to religious schools. Some of them still believe - lest their faith be lost - that the world was created on Thursday, October 29th, 4004BC. At 08:00 some believe, depending on which archaic pamphlet you read. No matter that the sun wasn't created until when? That's right, day four.
By all means, keep sending our federal funds to subsidize such lunacy. You don't suppose that that's partly the reason we're seeing the same lunacy being paraded in the Senate, do you? After all, most of the great liar's supporters are religious, are they not? Hence, I suppose, the federal funds to keep the fanciful lunacy sustained.
It's 2020. Have we not grown up yet?
6
Since I’ve been aware of and watching them for years, I feel that right now would be as good a time as any for the NYT to publish a 1619-type project on Dominion Theology or Dominionism, as these and like-minded people have been slithering into positions of power for several years now, as planned, and have even gotten one of their adherents in the White House, in the person of the Vice-President of the United States. I mention the 1619 Project because what’s coming to America is slavery by any other name, religious slavery, and it will be just as nasty as chattel. In the meantime, people need to investigate this movement on their own, although it may already be too late.
3
@Madcap1 Oh, just head over to the local Amway rally. You'll see the same kind of things I saw in the early 1980s: arrogant Dominionism and a fever to bring on Armageddon in their lifetimes.
The only good news is these folks are so incompetent at governing, they're out in the open now, like cockroaches in bright sunlight, and scurrying for cover.
It’s beginning to feel a lot like France in 1789 and Russia in 1917 here in America today
2
@Alan It's beginning to feel a lot like Germany in 1933.
2
I privately funded my own study of religion. What a pack of freeloaders all these fakes are.
6
Limitation of tax deduction of state and local taxes leaves mortgage-free residents of higher-tax states without tax deductibility for several thousands of dollars of donations after taking the standard deduction. It must have cut into charitable contributions.
1
Where do things like this come from?
When I was young, I knew several sets of Catholic parents who sent their kids to parochial school. They weren't rich, so it was a stretch, especially if they had three or four little ones, but they knew it was THEIR obligation to pay if they wanted their kids to receive a Catholic education.
Now, I read how parents who want their kids to go to a Christian school (I assume these are not all Catholics, but parents from the more assertive Christian schools that have proliferated since the 1980s or so) to get support from the public schools because, evidently, non-Christian parents should pay all or part of the OBLIGATION the parents assumed by choosing a non-public school.
What?
It seems simple to me, First Amendment simple. Is the Supreme Court going to ignore the First Amendment? How can that be?
3
The camel's nose is under the tent. Who will protect us FROM religion?
If experience and history have taught us anything, it should be that the worst government is one that supports and/or imposes particular religious beliefs. While what the court is contemplating doesn't force me to believe anything in particular, it does force me to financially support religious organizations whose beliefs and dogma I find objectionable. Some rural states may not have many "non-Christian" schools, but many other states do. Are we going to give taxpayer money to all religious schools regardless of their teachings? Do I have any right NOT to support those institutions?
The growing influence of religiosity in this country scares me to death. The things many "Christians" and other religious groups believe absolutely make no sense or, in my opinion, are absolutely dangerous to the safety and security of this world. Separation of church and state, and our freedom to believe or not believe without government interference is essential if our freedoms and democracy are to survive. It is one of the bedrock foundations of our country. Without it, this is no longer America.
5
Justice Gorsuch's statement that general principles trump specific facts is a stunner. The Flat Earth Society applauds.
4
Maybe Linda Greenhouse could find the time in an upcoming column to address how exactly the establishment clause is endangered when a state gives aid to a qualified school that has a religious identity.
I suspect Greenhouse has been so far left for so long that the center now looks like the right to her.
2
When public schools were integrated and when school prayers were eliminated, the segregationists and the Christians checked out of public schools and declared a war on public education. Vouchers, choice, white flight, private schools, charter schools, home schooling, and lawsuits like the one in this article all represent battlefields in this war. Like abortion, they won't stop until they totally get their way.
233
@JD Ripper: And it is all tautological reasoning based on post-mortal implications for the dead.
21
@Steve Bolger
It's not tautological (see definition). It's not logical, either. It's greed.
2
@JD Ripper NOT the Catholic schools. In Atlanta, we were first to integrate. The Vatican demanded it. As to the other item you mentioned, what is "public" standing may not always be in line with the advise in the confessional, js.
3
This is not about religion. This is another subtle way to segregate schools . Ask each Catholic school principal how many students are signed out of Catechism classes. Religious schools that only take children that will accept the catechism would likely fold. Across the country religious schools are being used to keep wealthy or middle class children away from black, brown, and handicapped children.
Families that have their children in religious schools, and have a disabled child, put them in the public school system. Because religious schools say they don't have the capability to provide an education.
People want a tax deduction to segregate their local schools.
6
Equality verses differentiation is a major hypocrisy in massive freedom searching social systems. You can’t have everyone treated the same yet drive competitive story lines for motivation. If we Americans were to target curriculums that clarify the boundaries of competition and differentiation we would extract the meaningful morals from religion, reduce the racism in future generations, and leave the fantasy God competition to reality TV.
2
So I assume that the tax exemption status will be eliminated? Gosh, think what the property tax bill would be for St. Patrick's in NY, or the National Cathedral?
14
I can't help but be infuriated by members of a religious majority groups using "religious freedom" to justify their cause, whether it is using taxpayer funding to pay for parochial schools or discriminating against gays or other minorities.
17
Could someone perhaps point out to me this "constitutional wall between church and state"? So far as I can tell, the only thing the Constitution says about religion is here:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Public money is used to protect free speech. Public money is spent directly on the press (see PBS). Public money is spent to ensure that people can peaceably assemble (see 2020 Women's March). Public money is spent on the people petitioning government for a redress of grievances.
The ONLY thing that the Constitution says is that Congress shall make no law establishing a national religion. Spending public money on parochial schools does no such thing. These schools could be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu. The government is not dictating anything about any religion.
So we spend public money on literally every other item mentioned in the First Amendment, and nobody makes the argument that it is being violated in any of those cases, but if we spend public money - without "establishing a religion" - on private educational institutions, we have somehow violated the Constitution?
Either all of these activities are unconstitutional or none of them are.
3
@Mike - Imagine a town, county or state where there is one dominant religion and that religion gets Federal funds. The Federal funds will enhance the power and religious reach of those religions which, effectively, helps the Federal government establish a religion. Sure, maybe that religion will be Muslim in Detroit, Sikh in parts of Minnesota, Jewish in parts of New York, but the overwhelming goal is for Conservatives to institute Christianity as the major, National Religion of the United States. It's unconstitutional. Period.
3
@Jim Dennis
You explain why it doesn't establish a religion and then call it unconstitutional. Sorry. If the money is available regardless of religious affiliation, it's not unconstitutional whatsoever.
Another great column from Greenhouse, on point as usual. We look forward to mosques opening in Montana and seeing how the school choice movement and Trump's DOJ react.
15
WHEN will the SC and Congress reflect the will of the people, that's what I want to know. I'm so over this minority rule, its got to stop.
9
The more I read opinion pieces such as this one, all of them being well written by the way, I cannot help but feel our society is devolving into various groups trying to tell other groups how they should live and what decisions they should make. Is this liberty and self reliance?
14
When I was a student in a Brooklyn Diocesan high school back in the 60s, I wanted to become a teacher, but there was no money available for a college education. However, New York State then offered the Regents Scholarship Examination. I used the scholarship money I won to pay my tuition at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution. I graduated debt-free and prepared to teach. Over the course of my career in the New York City public schools, I helped hundreds of students acquire the knowledge and skills they needed to enter college or the workforce and become in their turn productive members of society. None of this would have been possible without my Regents scholarship. It was an excellent program that benefited individual students, regardless of the type of school they attended or the college in New York State where they wished to study. I don’t know when or why it stopped being offered.
Parents who choose a religious education for their children pay tuition. However, it is not a fair choice because they cannot deduct the cost from their tax return. They pay the full amount of education taxes that fund the public schools in addition to the tuition.
Education is a basic human right that should be available to every individual regardless of religious affiliation because it provides long-term benefits to the whole society.
5
@PMW562 " However, it is not a fair choice because they cannot deduct the cost from their tax return."
That was their choice, and it isn't "fair" that churches are not taxed!
26
@PMW562 Education may be a basic human right, but in the US, a college education is not. And all American children have the opportunity to attend public school. If you choose a religious or private school instead, that's your prerogative, but it's not up to taxpayers to help fund your decision.
20
@PMW562 It is the responsibility of society to pay for the education of our young. We ALL pay taxes into the Public School fund. Not just parents, but even single people with no children. Why should people without children pay taxes to pay for public schools?
Because it is a responsibility for society. Now you may choose to send your children to a parochial school, but NOT at the cost of NOT funding the public schools. Just like why do my taxes pay for roads when I do not own a car? Again it is a responsibility of the public as it is for the common good to have free roads. Public schools are for the common good. Parochial schools do not serve the common public need. You have an obligation to support and fund the common good for society. You may pay to send your children to a parochial school, but at your expense in addition to your taxes which do fund education.
17
The fundamental problem in this case is the tax exemption for charitable giving. This horrible exemption needs to be done away with altogether. Whoever wants to contribute to whatever cause, can do so without dragging either state or federal government into the act. Then there would be no conflict between state and religion. There should be no state or federal participation in any private activities through the tax code or otherwise.
12
First, I do not support the concept of education vouchers, so Montana's decision to end the entire program has my unqualified support. The state provides a system of public education for it's citizens; if a particular citizen chooses not to utilize it the expense of that choice should be theirs and theirs alone. As another example, my tax dollars subsidize the bus system in my region; if I choose to buy a car and not use the bus I am not entitled to a voucher to assist in the cost of my car.
However, if an educational voucher system is in place, then there is no justification for discrimination against any school which is meeting the minimum standards set by the state.
9
Our Supreme Court has 5 conservative, Catholic, male justices. There is no center. The separation of church and state is gone.
43
The conservative majority on the Supreme court are all of one religion (Catholicism).* How can they pretend to be neutral on the issue before them - the public support of parochial school systems - that is integral to their faith? They should recuse themselves from deciding this issue.
* Justice Gorsuch is Catholic but attends an Episcopal church with his wife.
20
@Wes The issue has more to do with their conservatism than their Catholicism. There are may Catholics who don't agree with them on almost any issue.
6
@MJ Your comment that many Catholics may disagree with the Catholic justices is misleading. Since their are many millions of Catholics in the US of course "many" will disagree. I would bet, however that your "many" comes nowhere close to "majority".
5
If all churches were taxed, as they should be, this case would not have made it to the SCOTUS. However, as the very first words of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion,") guarantee all Americans the freedom FROM religion, this case has no basis for serious consideration.
Tax the churches, and we can talk.
26
For the Court to overturn the Montana Supreme Court's decision amounts to saying that the taxpayers of Montana should be compelled to support parochial schools. That doesn't sound like "free exercise" to me - more like "compulsory exercise".
I am sure the Catholic/Episcopalian conservative majority on the Court would consider it to be the height of bad manners to to mention their religious affiliation, or its influence on the direction they are taking American jurisprudence. So call me ill-mannered.
27
It is ironic that as religious groups scrambling to break down the barrier between church and state have become increasingly successful, the single largest "religion" in the US has become NONE. I do not believe this is a coincidence. Likewise, I believe the day of dominance of the allies of religion is coming to a close. Trump, McConnell, Kavanaugh and a host of other religious backed judges may be the final nail in the coffin for religion in the US.
27
@Tom
No coincidence.
I was born in 1948 and nothing proves "evolution" more than a religion.
These men you mention (add Pence and Barr) are nothing like the Christians I knew back in the 60's to the 80's. Jimmy Carter is the last Christian I have seen. From Reagan on -? Not at all.
These men don't feed the poor or heal the sick or, actually, do much of anything except pervert our laws to their own benefit.
I worked hard to become atheist, so hard, that I truly haven't a clue what this bunch is reading.
Ain't the Bible.
I never once saw in the Bible, OT or NT, that one is holy if they put children in dog cages.
Oh, yes: This bunch will make atheists of all of us.
5
@Tom Either that, or the final nail in the coffin for America.
2
If a church school wants public funds, then it is no longer a tax-free entity and should be treated as such.
40
Have we forgotten that this country was founded by folks escaping the 'old' country's religious persecutions, and the torturing and the killing that followed religious intolerance, hence, proposed a healthy separation of state from church, the former serving all people, the second just those 'believers' in certain dogma? You may think I, as an agnostic, have some unwillingness to accept different views and beliefs; that may be true, but the main argument here is that the state, to do a good job for the majority...without biases, ought to veer clear from favoring any given religion. Therefore, I advocate, in strict justice, that the state should subsidize all public schools, period. As an aside, educating our children must be based on the facts, the truth based on the evidence, and updating what science has to offer as our knowledge expands and benefits all. Let's remember that a 'belief' is not equivalent to knowing. Never has. If the Supreme Court departs from what the Constitution wisely shows, it may lose our trust in their judgement, an awful proposition.
17
@manfred marcus
WRONG!!!
It was not.
The original settlements (some of them) were "founded" by religious zealots who DID ALREADY HAVE religious freedom, in the Netherlands, but chose to leave there and cast their lot in a wilderness overseas where they could establish their own theocracy. Hardly seeking "religious freedom."
This COUNTRY was founded in 1787, with a constitution that deliberately left religion, all religions, out of it.
2
Are the Justices who had primary a private school education or send their children to a private school recusing themselves because of the conflict of interest?
I
18
@MSD are the Justices that had a non-private school education recusing themselves because of their lack of experience with private schools?
1
".... and what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
W.B. Yeats, "Second Coming", 1919.
12
What center? The flaw in democracy is democracy. We're a polarized nation and becoming more so by the minute. "…when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." (Benjamin Franklin, U.S. Constitutional Convention, 1787).
Cybertechnology now spins the vortex at the speed of light, sucking in politics, economics, religion, culture, science, morality, barns, cows, trees, feeding the tornado that roars through the countryside tearing up everything in its path.
Sometimes the Court kicks the wheel in an effort to slow it. Often the kick speeds it up. Society is ripped apart by centrifugal force. Just more junk in the vortex.
Eventually the tornado will run out of energy and release the debris and corpses. Survivors will pick through searching for bits to salvage. They'll find pictures and sit on the curbstones crying, yearning for times past. They'll bury the dead and mourn them. Then the cleanup and reconstruction begins.
3
@Mel
Empires come, and empires go, but the People remain.
3
What a clever piece of legal sophistry: If non-believing is actually a religion, then public schools are religious institutions, too. It follows then that the state cannot prefer public schools to private religious schools because of the non-establishment clause. The government must fund all schools equally or not fund schools at all.
I do not know where the inspiration for this claptrap came from, but I suspect it came from the nether regions rather than from on high.
10
@Charles Tiege sophistry indeed! Illogical logic.
@Charles Tiege...
The notion that public schools are actually parochial is itself sophistry.
Boy, I just don't get what 'conservatives' think they're actually conserving these days.
My taxes are supposed to go for wars, walls and trump's buddies' next yacht purchase, but conservatives legislate womens' health services away in the service of an ultra-orthodox minority religious sect. Catholic Universities don't want to cover birth control for their employees? They are coddled and given exception, to the harm of our SECULAR REPUBLIC.
Again, America has a strict strict separation of church and state, put up for a reason, now forgotten by the right. America has a simple constitution, easily understood, and not very controversial until recently.
Remember when 'conservatives' didn't want a Catholic president, because he'd be beholden to the Pope's influence more than our democracy? Now, an openly sectarian influence MUCH MORE POWERFUL holds sway, and our secular republic is falling under the political pandering of Pence and his mewling cohort of anti-Biblical opportunists.
27
I don't care if religious fanatics want THEIR tax dollars to be spent on a religious education for their children; or at least that is not my primary objection. I do care if MY tax dollars are used for their kid's religious education. Is that so hard to understand that even Supreme Court Justices can't fathom where it comes from?
25
It's fascinating that here in America, a developed country, religion is allowed to play such a large part in everyday life. Even more ridiculous is the much-touted "separation of church and state" mantra, which is reviled and is being actively undermined in most parts of the country, with the active connivance of the almost totally Christian judiciary.
The shameless cynicism of religious folk is breathtaking to observe. I feel that we are entering a new "Dark Ages" where religion is concerned. If you swear an oath and refuse to add fealty to the deity, it's still valid, but the contemptuous looks I have gotten when I have done this, make me fear for the future. I guess reporters at trump rallies feel the same.
The US supreme court has sadly devolved into a partisan, rubber stamp for zealots. Bush -v- Gore ruined it forever for me. Sates' rights indeed !
21
@Anthony Taylor...
America is the land where Western Mythology is more valued than Western Science.
1
@Anthony Taylor
Nothing happens in this country without Big$Money behind,... except maybe Bernie Sanders and Big$Money is waging a war against him too.
Back in the mid1960s, after being shellacked in the 1964 election, Big$MoneyConservatives restrategized. They borrowed heavily from Leo Strauss (the atheist founder of Neocons). He believed that, except for a few (the rich), most of the people were decadent rabble that needed to be ruled over by the able few. By default the rich assume they are the elect/able few and so entitled to rule.
Strauss believed that the able few should use religion as a tool to control the rabble. So the new plan was for Big$Money to create tax free foundations to seed institutions that infiltrated & seeded money to religious entrepreneurs w the quid pro quo that they yank their flocks to the right.
Everything is proceeding like clockwork. They control most religions & it's thru these means they are attempting to control everything else. To do that they need the supreme court to start empowering religions to do that.
The SCOTUS is doing Big$Money's bidding. See Citizens United and more blatently anti-democratic Arizona Free Enterprise Club, especially Kagan's blistering dissent as it undresses & embarrasses Roberts. It is the most entertaining Supreme Court case that I've ever read. In fact, its the only entertaining case I've ever read.
I find it odd that the reduction of barriers between church & state is often pursued in the name of a religion whose founder (considered divine) commands his followers to separate church from state. As a youth I found this an example of divine wisdom which appealed to me.
I went to a public school where 1/3 of the class was Jewish, 1/3 Catholic & 1/3rd protestant & we all got along great. I was proud & happy to learn in the 5th grade that it was part of our constitution. I was disappointed that it was the 1st time since Constantine & so was responsible for so many wars.
I thought that Christ's advocacy was for purposes of peace & that religious ethics couldn't make compromises that civics must. Maybe that was part of it. But recently on rehearing the Prodigal Son story I realized it was far more important.
In Christianity God gives us enough free will to reject him. Like the Prodigal Son we do. Damnation thus is ensured. But God doesn't want that so he provides a way back to him w/out giving up our free will: Christ's passion is that means.
The Prodigal Son & much of the Gospel is about us exercising free will in our search for truth, in hopes that it will lead us back to God. Secular govt makes our own search for truth more possible.
In mid60s per Leo Strauss GOP decided to use religion to control masses & yank them to the right ie the opposite of Christ's will & evangelicals is where they've got the most traction. The tell of that betrayal is their embrace of Trump
7
@Tim Kane No man speaks for god.
@Tim Kane No man speaks for god.
@Slann
Does god speak?
How would one know?
Supreme Court jurisprudence has been a joke for decades. Just look at 'ceremonial deism' and the profoundly religious (and monotheistic) invocations offered by the (government-hired) Congressional Chaplain, in front of Representatives, the entire Senate, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Anyone who can see that and believe the Court values separation of church and state is willfully blind.
8
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
3
A friend, who is both a Christian Evangelical and a steadfast adherent of biblical literalism, argued that proof that Eve was created from Adam's rib can is supported by the fact that women have one more rib than men. Exactly what are these religious schools teaching kids? In a world where China has tens of millions of engineers developing 5G technology and the U.S. has tens of thousands, are American taxpayers going to deny American youth the education that they'll need to be competitive in the world labor market by subsidizing scientifically refuted facts stubbornly advanced in religious schools?
17
@Bill When I was unfortunate enough to attend a Catholic school, I was taught that the pyramids were built by christians that the pagan Egyptians had enslaved. Is this the type of education we want for our children?
Makes me want to start a school based solely on Pagan beliefs. I can see the 'goat' mascot now!
I take solace in the fact that we only have to worry about these issues another 50-100 years before much larger issues with the changing climate occur...
8
The constitution clearly states that all laws must avoid placing any religion in a superior position. That way, non-believers are treated in exactly the same way as all religions. In other words, the conservative justices want to favor all religions.
It looks as if the camel is all the way in the tent.
6
Whatever happened to US Grant's:
No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community. ... church and state forever separate and distinct...
7
For the United States to remain A Democratic Republic, we must support the Separation of Church & State, otherwise we will become a Therocracy, and we will have a State religion , Christianity, which are Fore fathers we're against, & state so in our Constitution.
5
"Religious freedom" is the most misleading piece of GOP rhetoric since "pro-life."
True religious freedom means a separation of church and state, so that not a single taxpayer's dollar goes to a religious institution, in the form of a subsidy, tax break, or voucher.
True religious freedom also means that no employer or organization can discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs. Whether at Hobby Lobby or Notre Dame, the private beliefs of an organization's management cannot be imposed on employees or customers.
Religious institutions must pay their own way. The taxpayer should not be forced to support them, and they should not be answerable to the government.
15
There are some Lutheran synods that still will not allow women to vote on church issues. This is just one of many examples why I don't want my tax dollars going to pay for religious educations. If parents are okay with teaching their young girls to bow down to the patriarchy, they should pay for it themselves. And make no mistake, school choice evolved in Wisconsin as a way to reduce teacher pay and benefits. Mission accomplished. The fallout has been a growing teacher shortage and fewer and fewer people choosing teaching as a career.
12
There is also another basic principle in play. Taxpayers' money should be used for financing and improving public schools. If parents want to send theirs kids to a private school, they should pay themselves. And just a question for those in favor of "religious freedom": If a satanic sect has a school, do the parents will be able to use their voucher to send their children there? if an atheist group open a school, do the parents will be able to use their voucher to send their children there?
231
@Wilbray Thiffault
Well said, and the two major issues central here: the taxation of religious schools; and the slippery slope of "any" religion, self-defined, that divert dollars that cannot be disallowed under this change.
23
@Wilbray Thiffault Yes, they will. A couple of years ago a public school in Marietta, Georgia, started a "Good News Club," an after-school Christian evangelical program.
So the Satanic Temple "After School Satan" applied to open their program, and considered going to court. If the school board accepted "Good News," they HAD to accept "After School Satan."
Their website explains:
"Across the nation, parents are concerned about encroachments by proselytizing evangelicals in their public schools, and are eager to establish the presence of a contrasting voice that helps children to understand that one doesn’t need to submit to superstition in order to be a good person."
There are now SAS programs in Los Angeles, Pensacola, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Springfield MO, Tusccan and D.C.
28
@Wilbray Thiffault
WE provide public funds for the education of ALL children. The funds should follow the child and the only restriction on how the child can apply those funds should be that the provider is a qualified. If the child needs a tutor, special education, accelerated education, sign language delivered education, online remote delivered education, etc .. the allocated funds should be applicable,
3
Separation of church and state is mandated in the Constitution based on what had happened to the founders of the US when they resided in Europe. If there is no separation, then the tax exempt status of religious organizations should be stopped. By the way, I am a Christian and am appalled by what people are doing in the name of Christ.
6
I support vouchers and, if a state is going to have a voucher program, believe that it is discrimination for a state to categorically refuse to give money to a school with a religious affiliation (as long as that school has respectable academics), but the Montana case doesn't provide an example of unequal treatment, since the tax credit program no longer exists for secular private schools either.
Proponents of vouchers and aid to religious schools should wait for a case out of Maine (Carson v. Makin) to rule in favor of equal treatment.
In Maine, many small districts do not have high schools and pay for their high school-aged students to attend private schools of their choosing, as long as the school is not religious.
That is a clear-cut example of unequal treatment based on religious identity and that is what the Supreme Court should strike down.
2
You've got it completely backwards. Religious institutions should not receive a penny of taxpayer money. They have a right to exist, but to fund them with public money establishes a state religion -- the most fundamental violation of the Bill of Rights.
16
@Arizona Guy There's a reason our Founders (most of whom were deists and did not belong to any religion) made the separation of church and state the FIRST thing they put in the firewall of protections they set up to prevent us from slipping into tyranny. They still remembered the centuries of warfare and inquisitions that soaked Europe in blood for centuries. There is no theocracy that has EVER been a good idea. Period.
3
It's not just the center of SCOTUS that is slipping away, but the very notion of having common cause. Rather than tax dollars going to public schools, money will now follow the children of the families who contribute most.
The implications are broader than the church/state divide. Soon, funds for public works will flow proportionately to communities based on their contributions. It is the powerful and wealthy exerting influence to keep more of their earnings to use for their purposes without acknowledgment of our common interests and our dependence on one another.
The myth of individualism has been a powerful and productive driver for our nation, but it is truly a myth. In practice, the kind of individualism and sectarianism that many on the right push will result in the kind of segregated society found in post-colonial Africa. Wealth inequality will accelerate and, with it, unrest and violence. Today's gated communities are nothing compared to the types of compounds that the rich will develop for their own protection.
If this sounds far-fetched I would encourage you to consider whether in 1965 many would have predicted the world of today. Technology aside, few would have believed that the USSR would be no more, the UK would have such a small (and shrinking) footprint, and that China would be a co-equal with the US. Things change and things like this case are the harbinger of changes to come.
10
The invitation seems obvious enough: let every person declare their own religion in which their own behaviors are religiously mandated. Then let each of us demand money for our religion to flourish.
Since my religion will have only one follower, I declare that I am God's chosen person as revealed to me through the agency of the one person God has chosen as his true follower. In other words, I have been told by the one God chose that we are the one chosen person.
There hundred and some-million religions, all equal in the common assertion that each individual I is the chosen one. Surely this mandates that we all receive funds from society to make sure that no member of each solitary religion can be treated as something other than what we each claim for ourselves, but that we necessarily withhold from others who are not members of our religion.
As the religious poet, John Donne, might have said of such a world: All men are their own island. For whom does the bell toll? For each and every one of us, unheard by others from whom our religion separates us.
8
Why not, the rest of the constitution doesn’t seem to matter either...just cross the establishment clause out as well. Will make the thing that much faster to read.
9
"Free" exercise of religion doesn't mean that the general public should pay for it. My parents paid their taxes and also paid extra when they wanted us in private Catholic schools. Many of our neighbors who were also Catholic went to public school and got their dose of religion class by going to CCD outside of public school hours and budgets.
Public education funds for public education. If you want your kids to get some education based on what your particular mosque or temple or church or coven wants them to learn, pay for it from what you give to that organization.
27
These religious parents are making the choice to brainwash their children in support of religion for which there is no evidence or merit other than historical. Schools are supposed to be knowledge-based education that relies on evidence, not on ancient beliefs... multiple and diverse as they are. This case undermines both Montana state and the federal constitutions. I thought these Republicans on the Supreme Court were state's right proponents? They are but only where it serves their own ideology.
15
It has been abundantly clear for several years that there is a growing bias in the U.S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, to erode and eventually destroy the Constitutional separation of church and state.
A society in which Christians, whether they be Catholics or Protestants, are favored over Jews, Muslims, Hindus and people adhering to any number of other faiths, violates every principle of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment.
The nation sought by the administration of Donald Trump, including Betsy DeVos and William Barr, bears no resemblance to the nation contemplated by our Constitution.
24
@sdw
Roberts is a practicing Catholic. Catholics follow Christ. Christ COMMANDED his followers to separate church from state. It's in 3 of the 4 gospels.
So, what gives?
In the mid 1960s, after 64 election, the rich right restrategized around the philosophy or Leo Strauss (an atheist) which advocated using religion as a tool to control the masses. The GOP values religions but not for what the religions themselves value, but for their utility as a tool to yank their flocks to the right.
Rich families, seeded tax free foundations that seeded tax free institutions that seeded money to religious entrepreneurs with the quid pro quo that they yank their flocks to the right
They've been pretty successful at this, especially with evangelicals & many catholics (see Roberts). The biggest tell is their support for the grotesquely decadent Trump, which many religious people have a hard time with.
So the movement to lower separation between church & state has to do with an agenda where by the right feels they control church and by that means control state. Along the way you have the dichotomy of Christians advocating for conflating church & state, and more grossly, advocating for Trump.
8
@Tim Kane
It is past time to put Christ back into the word Christian.
1
@ExPatMX
Christ never referred to himself and his followers as christians. He, and they, were Jews.
3
One of the Right’s goals in packing the Supreme Court with partisan hacks was to tear down the wall of separation between church and state. The Republican elite knows full well that the religiously indoctrinated are easier to herd than free thinkers.
14
@Renee Margolin It is too bad the Constitution doesn't call for a wall of separation between Church and State. The Gov't can't establish a national religion most definitely - and there can be no requirement of religion adherence in getting/holding a federal job. Those are covered. the separation of church and state as now believed was invented by a court in the 40s and could be undone by a court in the 20s.
1
I see the likely ruling in this case as fueling either (i) the continuing balkanization of the America public or (ii) the growing movement, especially among the young, away from traditional religions. Or both.
In other words, be careful what you wish for as there are always unintended consequences.
6
My local public school is now considering a school bond to raise more money for schools. Why should I support a bond when the money is going to go to private schools. Equally frustrating because I do support the bond and more money for my local school district is that these religious entities are tax exempt. If they want to participate then pay taxes like the rest of us.
15
I have always been confused about this argument that religious freedom should include school vouchers for religious schools and other related issues. I was always had the understanding that religious freedom was defined as the state (e.g. the government) could not establish a national religion. That citizens had the right to practice their own form of religion without government interference. Religious freedom has now been broadened, it seems, to require taxpayers like me (agnostic and not practicing any formal religion) to use my tax dollars to support religious institutions that I do not support financially in any other way. To me this is great distortion of religious freedom and allows governments to now take sides in religious issues that should remain with the individual religious institutions. If a family wishes to send their children to a religious or any other private school they should do so at their own expense and not be entitled to taxpayer dollars to do so. Between charter schools and religious affiliated schools the use of tax dollars should be unconstitutional. Tax dollars should go to public schools only.
21
The Blaine amendments were discriminatory then, and they're discriminatory now. The only way for school choice to be non-discriminatory is if it respects the diversity of children and families in this country.
It must not be held hostage to religious or secular prejudices. If you don't want school choice at all, I respect that view. Personally, I think the government school monopoly is mediocre at best but that is perfectly Constitutional. However, once you make a public benefit available, you simply cannot impose a religious test.
What's next: shall we start monitoring the roads to ensure that priests and religious teachers aren't using them to evangelize? Stripping Medicare and Medicaid funding from religious hospitals?
3
Typical apples and oranges argument of someone who can’t logically defend his position.
3
I wish Ms. Greenhouse had identified the religions of the nine justices. I believe that a majority are Catholic, even though Catholics make up less than 25% of the US population. They have mostly been hand-picked by the Federalist Society for precisely this fact and because of their radical "conservatism."
22
The best answer should be reached with one perspective—What is best for the kids. Just focus on the kids and then measure if working for the kids.
1
@david
All that does is push the argument one step away. Is it best for kids to be indoctrinated in religion? I say no. You might say yes. Another person might say yes if it's my religion, no if it's yours. That's why government should avoid the issue altogether, not fund religious schools, and teach only facts and scientific theory.
233
@david: I got salt thrown at me for weeks in fifth grade after I tried to illustrate my dawning understanding of self-organization as crystals forming from solutions. I had upset some Roman Catholic classmates because I was trying to explain away God.
7
@david Actually, that is far too simplistic, in my opinion. You forgot that kids grow up and become members of a society. Ultimately it is that society which will either be improved or made worse by the allocating of taxpayer money to private institutions. I oppose such use of taxpayer money myself as unconstitutional, and unwise - despite the views of the Supreme court and their Roman Catholic majority.
5
I’d frame it as more of an educational freedom issue than a religious issue. The state requires that students attend school and they allocate funds for that child’s education. Funding should follow the child, not a school, and families should be free to make decisions that work best for them. Education is important enough that decisions about it should start within the family and be made in the context of their chosen community, rather than in a legislature or court that limits options.
@JP Campbell Unfortunately in a scenario where the funding follows the student, in a setting like Montana, where there is an overwhelming majority of people in one religion, that could leave the minority of people who don’t practice said religion without any alternatives.
3
@JP Campbell
Necessarily, then, minorities in the community will be excluded. Will your community fund my Temple of Satanist school?
1
Madrasas, too?
19
@TOM
Madrases and covens, too, and all temples that worship nihilism and the despair that we live an the abyss.
4
Oh, is there currently a separation between church and state? It's nearly impossible to tell anymore.
15
@Robin Oh: That ended in 1953 when "under God" became part of a national identity oath.
3
Somebody should try to use such vouchers to send kids to a Muslim madrasa or a Buddhist temple school, and watch how fast that “religious freedom” rhetoric collapses into confused and bigoted hypocrisy.
34
The silliest projection of all is the notion that an all powerful all knowing being would suffer emotional distress from want of being prayed at. I'd just leave this planet a nuclear cinder if it were me.
9
@Steve Bolger
(sigh) It was so easy being an all-powerful Goddess or God 10,000 years ago.... and miracle's were so easy to come by.....
1
Arguing against crazy people is useless. They can easily be manipulated by humoring them which is what the GOP elite has done with careful planning.
Being devoutly religious is not technically insanity because so many of us are susceptible to that type of irrational thinking, but the dynamics are the same as schizophrenia.
How can we save our democracy, if arguing against crazy people is futile- whether gun fanatics or religious fanatics?
Use every power you have, including your purchasing power. These people are organized and weaponized by FOX "News". Stop buying the products of their sponsors.
Starve the beast and kill its power.
18
All religions, being made by humans out of fear and other "felt" delusions, continue to plague human kind. That some people choose to live and die under the curses of self-imposed fantasies is OK with me. But it is not OK to game systems of government so that free and healthy citizens must pay for the religious whims and delusions of others.
17
Will a religious school victory mean that states must support Islamic, Orthodox Jewish and other religiously ethnic but non-Christian schools?
9
@Disillusioned
Yes.
And, even worse: They will also have to support MY beliefs, too - and I'm an atheist, the fastest-growing segment of American religion.
Our numbers already surpass the Catholics (Pew).
I've been saying for decades that these religious fundamentalists will make atheists of us all - and, Lo!, here we are!
8
Since when is not giving a government handout “punishing” anyone? Conservatism has transmogrified into craven pandering.
If you want to inculcate your kids with your religion, do it on your own dime. Just make sure when they are done, they can pass the new immigration test that they will not become dependent on public assistance after that.
Because if they cannot pass that test, I want them deported. Fair is fair.
11
The notion of divinity is an outright lie, as one can readily see by how comprehensively dishonest the US is about practically anything. Subsidies for charlatans projecting human nature onto physics is the dumbest public policy in the US.
7
Do you think that there is any link between most of the Supreme Court justices being Catholic and the decision? It might be possible for those churches to use this money to offset the money they have to pay to those boys molested?
11
@Kevin Bitz
The last I heard that amount was over $2 Billion dollars.
Whether this money goes directly or indirectly to the Catholic Church, it will be part of that package we will be paying for.
3
The Court is now in place to favor the rich and religious right, the white and wealthy, well into the future. They seem to be clueless that the nation's populace has been heading in the opposite direction for quite awhile.
8
Meanwhile, we try to overthrow the theocracy in Iran. Forgive them, Mother, for they know not…
12
I can't wait until the vouchers program is used to start Muslim schools all over the place. Maybe I'll start one myself, even though I'm not a Muslim. Let's see how these Catholic Libertarians like that.
15
Ah, but the far right religionists have an out: they don’t believe Islam is a religion. Problem solved!
1
@CynicalObserver
And Rand Paul will establish the Church of the "Aqua Buddha". Again.
1
In case you wondered why 5 of the 9 members of the Supreme Court are Catholics, we have our answer.
5
Of course many people "of faith" want special treatment. Make America an Inquisition Again. McConnell is Scots-Irish. Trump's mother was a Scot. Calvin rides again.
7
Republicrooks have been fighting for this unconstitutional, undemocratic, un-American action for decades. IMO, they have bribed their way to an extreme right wing SCOTUS. If they can institutionalize religion, they will have the manipulable population they have always dreamed of. When Fascism come to America it will be carrying a cross and be wrapped in the flag.
10
I get the feeling when writing here that one must be dead to get read on certain topics.
1
Sigh. There is no constitutional “wall” separating church and state. You just made that up.
The question presented in the Montana case is whether the bigoted, viciously anti-Catholic “Blaine Amendments” to state constitutions can trump standard 1A analysis.
The bigots who wrote these provisions had no problem providing taxpayer funds to private, secular schools, but discriminated against Catholic schools because they hated Catholics. Anti-Catholic hatred is still rampant on the American left.
So, shutting down the entire school choice program because it also helped religious schools doesn’t bother you?
There IS precedent for such things; shutting down every public pool rather than follow the Constitution and integrate, which, presumably, doesn’t bother you either. We can call it equal opportunity bigotry. Can you see Justice Kagan’s views? “The consequence of this decision is that there is no discrimination” because no one gets to go swimming. One wonders how that would fly?
MT's SC stands in the shoes of proud, unapologetic bigots.
@Michael
As a woman let me point out that true, equal opportunity bigotry is called "misogyny", a belief system that all churches have practiced since Day One.
Sorry, but putting my money into any system that says I am "an inferior" doesn't work for me.
Never again, right?
8
@Michael Sorry; this case is about the state of Montana shutting down the use of state funds for scholarships to religious and secular private schools. Any family in the state is still free to send its children to any private school they can afford.
If the Supreme Court requires the state to restore this program, I fail to see how it is not respecting an establishment of religion, to use the language of the First Amendment.
6
Do these Christian activists realize that they are opening the door to using tax-supported vouchers to subsidize a Muslim school that teaches Sharia Law?
9
The history of governments dominated by religion has not been good. One look at the middle east shows the division and destruction that accompanies religious disputes, consider Ireland in recent history as well. To force a state to spend taxpayer money, money gathered neutrally, to be spent to fund religious schools, on its face violates the constitutional separation of religion from government. To the extent Roberts calls out discrimination against Catholics, remember the recent history of child abuse. I don't want my taxes to support that Church or any other religion.
10
I think that if private schools want public funds, then they need to conform to the rules that govern any other public school. They follow the state curriculum; they cannot promote a religion; and they cannot discriminate on the basis of religion, ability, etc.
Of course they wouldn't agree with it because what they want to is to have it both ways -- to get public funds but be unaccountable to the public.
19
How will the people of Montana feel when a madrassa opens up in Bozeman? We need to maintain the wall between the church and state. No public monies for private or religious education. No vouchers.
12
If only this was a case of an Islamic school as opposed to a Catholic school that was getting scholarships, the public view would be vastly different. That, in of itself, tells you the entire story.
17
As Secty DeVos says, "all I do is for the Glory of God", her God.
So, we are headed for a theocracy for Christians, or those who claim to be Christian. All this is for "Freedom of Religion" but only for the Evangelical set. Freedom to loot the US Treasury and supported by the Supreme Court.
The only positive thing I can think of here is that the arrogant DeVos's of the world will eventually be pushed back.
14
@Harold Anthony
I find DeVos to be totally ignorant of our history ('history' being part of the educational system).
The reason why the First Amendment is "first" is because our nation was created to form a WALL between the Church and State..... the "State" back then, prior to the revolution, being the theocracy of ENGLAND.
France's revolution came next, against the Catholic Church.
There is a reason why none of the modern countries are theocracies. That reason is that a citizen (not a 'subject'!) gets a better deal under a Constitution than under a Covenant.
So far, this Catholic Supreme Court is proving that true.
Time to yank 'tax exemption' - these people are making a mockery of it.
1
Thank you, Ms Greenhouse for your continued reporting on SCOTUS.
This is indeed a "backward" case as you say. After the Montana court ruled in a purposefully non-discriminatory way, the plaintiffs now ask the Supreme Court to be discriminatory!
11
Que the handmaid. Looking more like Afghanistan by the day, only without the ethics.
7
I wonder if some wanted to use their tax payer funded vouchers to send their children to an Islamic school, would the "Freedom of Religion" crowd be so supportive. Freedom of religion means freedom for Christians particularly conservative Christians. Maybe a test case would help sort this out.
4
Mitch McConnell stole a senate seat for Republicans. That made all this possible.
8
@prrh
Purely illegal.
He should have been impeached for that little trick.
2
@prrh AND a Supreme Court Judge. Never forget Merrick Garland.
2
@prrh You mean a Supreme Court seat.
2
The right-wing mantra of "religious freedom" strikes me as Orwellian in nature and adaptable to almost any absurdist crusade.
10
There is no Supreme Court, what there is their Supreme Dictates to Society, Amen.
3
We are only a stone's throw from tax breaks for
Bob Jones University
Anyone escpecting Roberts to do the right thing
has a long wait coming. He is presiding over a sham
trial and he will do nothing.
DUH
12
Ummm, so I guess ever getting churches' tax exemption reversed is out of the question?
Seriously, the idea that churches and their peripheral businesses are tax exempt, and now demand not just equal funding on a par with secular enterprises, but in spite of it being denied everyone, is outrageous!!! "So, what do you want for nuthin', your money back?" as the old joke goes.
8
Taking citizens’ money to send to religious institutions is a plane violation of the establishment clause and the rights of all Americans.
The Christian patriarchy that has seized Control of the Supreme Court will only continue to weaken their “religion” as they force it down our throats.
6
You’re wasting your breath. Their are too many Roman Catholic justices on the court who are eager to get their hands on my Protestant tax dollars.
6
While about 52% of Americans are Protestants, 24% are Catholics, 10% are atheists/ agnostics and 1.8 are Jewish six of the Supreme Court of the United States Justices are Catholics and three are Jewish.
The Supreme Court of the United States sits at the pinnacle of the least democratic branch of our constitutional republic.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is the basic ethical obligation of the legal profession
2
It would be interesting to see what those in favor of giving state or federal money to schools promoting religion, meaning Christianity, would do, if the school requesting money was a madrassa.
5
When I was in my 20’s, a State Trooper in Virginia gave me a speeding ticket on which he wrote in capital letters “For Exceeding 105 MPH in a school zone at 3 AM.”
I pointed out to the lady Judge who presided at my hearing that the traffic was light and school was closed at 3 AM, but she was not sympathetic to my cause and sentenced me to a month in driver training school, where they showed us gory movies about bad traffic accidents.
It turned out to be the last traffic ticket I ever got in my life, and -- apart from jury duty -- the last time I have ever appeared in a court of law.
Looking back on it today, and comparing this Judge's life-saving-performance-then-on behalf-of-me to Chief Justice Roberts' utterly-inadequate-one in-behalf-of-the-nation-now, I am beginning to think of her as the legal giant and Roberts as the pygmy one.
8
Religious education, whether a Madras, Yeshiva, or a Catholic school has done more to radicalize the most radical right wing sectors of every society than anything else. Why public funds need to go to these miseducation camps is beyond me.
10
Which is the more theocratic and authoritarian nation? The USA or Saudi Arabia. Discuss among yourselves.
6
Religious neutrality. Way past time to tax churches. Treat their property just like all other property.
Let’s just ignore that pesky Establishment clause. Kind of like the “militia” in the Second Amendment.
Oh right; just claim it’s in the national interest, and anything goes.
10
@Jo Williams
You're right!
And I hear the "national interest'" is up to about a trillion on all that old debt. (22 trillion)
We can no longer afford these greedy religious men.
Time to tax all of it.
1
I do not want to pay taxes to propagate lies with a government imprimatur! Why would anyone else?
5
I would love to see what would happen if it became known that taxpayer money was being used to fund tuition at a new Madrassa in Billings.
5
Federal funding of vouchers can result in dilution of public school funds. Religious and private schools often pick the better students, leaving struggling students behind in underfunded public schools.
The ultimate goal of many of these groups is to dismantle public schools.
A Supreme Court ruling that allows this would be a beginning in achieving that goal.
10
"The plaintiffs are claiming a continued entitlement to scholarships for their parochial school tuition despite the fact that the state court ended the scholarship program for religious and secular schools alike. No one gets the money."
Separate but not equal, in fact, more equal than others. This is reminiscent of Animal Farm, and the camel's nose is in the tent to obliterate the fine lines of the all-important anti-establishment clause.
If we can watch while the very definition of presidential authority gets mangled and redefined in an impeachment trial, it won't be long before we're debating more and more cases that seek to extend religious privilege for Christian schools. Not Muslim, not Jewish, not any other religious domination, just white Christian (including Catholic) schools.
I'm Catholic, but still horrified that the Supreme Court would even consider any case that posed such a risk to our first amendment.
14
This would only be the beginning of favoritism toward religious institutions of all kinds. The current administration and evangelical groups have a complete religious agenda waiting for the next election. They intend to turn back the clock as far as they can get away with it. They will start with abortion at the top and move the extremity after that. This is a very unfortunate decision.
3
The right has learned its lesson well - the left needs to be considerate...they does not. And they win. Again and again.
1
When religion and government drive the wagon together, they fail to see the rapidly approaching cliff in front of them (loosely paraphrased from Frank Herbert's Dune series). Trinity Lutheran was a warning we failed to act on, the Chief Justice's footnote notwithstanding.
2
Geez, maybe the Dems now think that they should have been upfront and honest about Brett Kavanaugh instead of still pandering for the same votes as the Republicans.
It is the 21 st Century now, not the 11th..... Most Americas are way ahead of both parties on "truth" and our "leaders" keep dragging us backward in time.
2
@twill
Honesty, responsibility, and acknowledging the consequences of our actions is SO 11th Century.
1
@jumblegym I think you missed my point. Irregardless of what he did or did not do in the 1980's, THE issue is what he is going to do on the Supreme Court. Our "leaders" live in the past .
The case is a report card on public school education and its failure in some communities.
1
It affords the perfect opportunity to pass the collection plate in the entire community, every day. Ambition is good?
When they run up against the business communty the nonsense will stop.
Gorsuch, refusing to join footnote 3 in the Trinity Lutheran Case, wrote: Such a reading would be unreasonable for our cases are "governed by general principles, rather than ad hoc improvisations."
If so, the Supreme Court is duplicitous because in the (pre-Gorsuch) Shelby County v Holder decision, the court invalidated the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act (which had been reauthorized by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress) because it "reenacted a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day".
1
We'd be much better off if we treated religious institutions as what they truly are: businesses. Some are indeed non-profit, and they could claim and file in such a category, but others are undeniably for-profit, and abuse the heck out of the system.
Tax them all like everyone else. There begins a separation of church and state.
But the leanings of the Supreme Court does beg the question of, what can the American Public do when the Supreme Court goes rogue, hoists a political flag, and no longer even pretends to be non-political?
I suppose that would signal that it is time to, shall I say nicely, begin it all again?
The Republicans are coming! The Republicans are coming!
4
Once again, religious zealots insist on forcing us to subsidize their religious education in the name of “freedom” when our Constitution specifically forbids it. We have to stop the spread of this taint on the first principle of our country, which was to escape the strictures of the Church of England. Current members of our Supreme Court have started to normalize religious subsidies in the name of freedom, but just imagine if the subsidy was for a Muslim school teaching Sharia law. No doubt those who talk about “freedom” would draw the line. True freedom is freedom from forced state subsidy of religious indoctrination that perverts secular law. Only secular law is neutral. If you want a religious education, you pay for it, not me.
5
Betsy DeVos, the Trump appointed Secretary of Education, the rich woman from Michigan, and her religious ways are destroying public education for the United States.
Religious schools do not have to provide special education assistance, such as for kids with disabilities, but by God, those kids will learn their Bible verses. Religious school teachers do not have to abide by same employment or educational policies, either. Class sizes? All depends on the day. Squeeze ‘em in.
Vouchers for religious schools are decimating our public school funds. In case you are wondering, I know for a fact in Wisconsin, if children in a family qualify for vouchers because of income limits, the parent income is never checked again once qualified. That’s right - mom could go back to work, the parents could get substantial raise, and taxpayers still pay for vouchers which go to support churches....all the way through those kids’ school years.
Oh well, they will all be good Christians just like Donald Trump, right?
2
@MIMA - maybe religious school teachers don't have
to be paid much. Will they be eligible for SNAP
(food stamps), housing vouchers, medicaid?
1
GREAT. I am a Unitarian. We are pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, pro-Black Lives Matter, pro-Respect for all living beings (poor people, animals, humans, bacteria, the life field of Earth), pro-getting rid of fossil fuels, pro-Social Justice, anti-war, anti-bigotry, pro-education, anti-abuse, pro-Science, FEMINIST, and many other progressive stances. We will use government funds to pay for schools that share this information! Bring it.
7
Utah of all places resoundingly rejected vouchers for any non-public education. Trump, Betsy DeVos, is shoving this down even conservative throats. The reasoning is simple. Under the auspices of religious freedom vouchers can divert public funds not only to religious institutions but also for-profit institutions. Many charter schools are just shell companies. Non-profit in name only. They spend much more per student without producing better outcomes.
That's the real goal here. Trump is using taxpayer money to advance Trump University at the expense of public schools. Religion is just a pretext.
4
This, as so many issues of moment in the courts today, is not so much about religion in America as it is about the corruption, the legal hollowing out, the ultimate demise of SCOTUS under Roberts.
Even an assignment as simple as sitting back and watching our woebegone impeachment charade, under rules partisan and simple-minded, demonstrates Roberts' utter unwillingness to decide against his ideological team.
Defensively pointing out his only role is to enforce bizarre rules promulgated by McConnell for maximum pr effect with "imprisonment" the penalty for speaking to one's neighbor, milk and water the only sustenance, technology of every sort forbidden, Roberts refuses to move against the home team.
So Republicans prance about the chamber conducting Google searches on their Apple watches, communicating via email, text, and instant message; forbidden Bics flourish as favored pencils lie scattered in contemptuous disuse; paper, the most dangerous technology of all, is employed for simple linguistic amusement as well the vile passing of notes among Senators; bathroom breaks abound and grow, media escapes its appointed coral, the place becomes Republican Bedlam.
Still Roberts sits peaceably watching his favored Conservative children make a mockery of the law and a dead stick of his nation.
This religion hoo-hah is only more of the same. Roberts pulling a classic "Oh my..." Susan Collins, waiting for the moment to announce his foregone decision or not to act at all.
3
Religious freedom sounds like fun. Personally, I’m converting to Solipsism.
It’s hard to argue that life is meaningless, when all of existence is merely a function of one’s own being. I assume that all of you pesky mortals will begin to do my bidding presently.
1
As a former evangelical and now a proud atheist and DEMOCRATIC partisan, its my belief that imaginary gods bless this decision as well as this nation.
2
Religious indoctrination of one's children is a right. Having it subsidized by my tax dollars is not. That churches and religious schools are tax-exempt adds to the insult and the injustice.
I should not have to carry anyone's god on my back.
10
I fear that with this SC there will soon be full public funding of all religious schools in the country.
1
It is absolutely the case that to the religious right, the definition of "religious persecution" is actually "lack of special treatment for my religion".
4
Why aren’t public taxes going to parochial schools a freedom of speech problem? I don’t want my tax dollars used to inculcate kids with religious ideas that I disagree with. Isn’t that forced speech? If money is speech, as found in Citizens United, then this is surely my money being used to promote ideas that I find offensive. And don’t be fooled, teaching that birth control is sinful and that gays are evil turns in to political power.
5
It's odd that we allow public money in the form of Medicare and Medicaid dollars to go to religiously sponsored hospitals - including many Catholic hospitals - but somehow it's unconstitutional for public dollars to go to religiously sponsored schools.
Perhaps Ms. Greenhouse could write a column about New York taxpayer dollars going to orthodox yeshivas.
@J. Waddell While there may be exceptions, in general Catholic hospitals promote healing, whereas Catholic schools promote Catholicism.
Well, we can see the result of state funded religious schools in the Middle East. Good luck to future generations.
7
I'm not sure if I understand all of the terminology here, vouchers and such. But my understanding is that churches, which pay NO taxes, are entitled to everyone else's tax dollars?
Help me out here
6
Still pointless. We have not had a legitimate SCOTUS since 2000. Now that the court is packed with two pretenders to the bench, all "decisions" must be nullified before legitimacy can be restored. Not likely!
Gorsuch and Kavanaugh must be stricken from the record, which will reverse many illegitimate "decisions," but will we see that in our lifetimes? Nah, we will age out before the criminals guilty of invading Iraq have been brought to justice.
2
I have a modest proposal.
Let's start taxing religious institutions so we can properly fund religious activities.
2
These parochial schools are affiliated with some religious order that is tax exempt so why send them tax money? Follow the Constitution or live to regret it.
3
The Christian far right seeks not religious freedom (no one is stopping them from practicing their religion) but the privileging of Christian faith. This is in clear defiance of our wholly secular Constitution.
“There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.” — Ruth Hurmence Green
9
Don't you love the rationale for not firing Trump? Presidents who believe their re-election will serve the national interest can do anything whatsoever to get re-elected, probably including shooting down civilian airliners with hacked enemy air defenses.
2
Would these same people argue for public funding of a Muslim school? A Quaker school?
Nope. It's all about traditional Christian religious beliefs and practices.
2
End tax avoidance for all religious institutions, then they can have some of my tax dollars.
3
In that case churches can start paying taxes if they want in but our so called Supreme Court will of course let us down and violate the Constitution and do what worst for the nation.
2
In the 1970s I studied constitutional law with Milton Konvitz, the illustrious legal scholar who taught at Cornell for decades. He wrote a number of books on Supreme Court case law. He was also a religious Jew, born in Palestine in 1910.
He made a clear and convincing argument that the Establishment Clause, which demands a wall of separation between government and religious entities, is the only way free expression of religion can be assured. As he pointed out, once government is giving you money, government can poke into your affairs. At that time, just about every religious body endorsed a high and strong wall of separation, which they saw as necessary for their survival and autonomy.
Now many Christians in America feel besieged and discriminated against because the government won't subsidize their decision to bypass the public schools in favor of a religious education for their children. Just another sign of the changing times.
Those who object to "funding" abortion have the Hyde Amendment.
I object to funding the indoctrination of impressionable children in religious schools. Where's my Hyde Amendment? Why is the "choice" of the believers or the right-wing the only choice that matters? Will the Supreme Court care about my choice? No. No, they will not. They will breach that wall with impunity. And my already backward state will run with the Montana decision and fall even further behind.
4
As a Catholic, the most generous response I have to this case is that this is embarrassing and unseemly. John Roberts et al. can blather on about religious expression as much as they want to justify this cynical ploy to destroy a public good, but it's a faithless exercise at its core.
Faith doesn't need tax subsidies. Faith doesn't need constant reassurance from earthly authorities that it is doing the right thing. That's not how any of this works! Faith is internal, essentially irrational (as in beyond proof by human methods), and can only be nurtured by the self.
Government backing of "deeply held religious beliefs" doesn't support actual religious faith any more than a corset helps develop strong core muscles.
8
Time for a needed reversal in the Court’s “separation of church and state” jurisprudence. The Court has been waging an unjustified and unlawful war against Christianity for decades. School administrators and town clerks across the country are afraid to tolerate the words “God” or “Jesus” anywhere within the bounds of their jurisdictions. Time for the madness to end.
The core argument for all religions is Special Pleading. God is the "uncaused cause," that is allowed to violate the laws of logic because that is necessary to explain God’s existence. The problem with this sort of soft thinking is that it trains adherents to apply Special Pleading to other arguments beyond just their god claims. This case is a perfect example.
1
The Republican appointed judges will of course reinforce the tyranny of religious fanatics over those of an atheist persuasion and overturn the founding fathers original intent of separation of church and state. They will do this so that Republicans can realize their desire to privatize schools across the nation from which they will profit from. At the same time public schools will be starved of funds lowering their ability to produce an education even further. People have a right to a secular education based on science and people also have a right to send their children to parochial schools if they wish. What they don't have the right to do is demand me to fund their private school choices while costing the general public more money for their own private preferences around their religion. Freedom of religion means you get to worship what you want. It doesn't mean I have to subsidize it because that's why we don't tax them. There is nothing here but the attempt to further undermine public education again by the Right which wants us all to pay more for education while they seek further tax cuts. Please do not be fooled into thinking its about religion because its about money and a little brainwashing to boot.
271
@Mark I agree that the goal of the Right is not religious freedom. I think it is freedom from (not of) association.
Public schools have been society's melting pot--the place where the rich and the poor, the religious and not, and people of all races (barring significant housing segregation) rub shoulders. If a family chose to opt out, they would do so on their own dime whilst still contributing to the education of all. The rich don't like that arrangement and are now using a religious freedom argument to essentially opt out of shared space.
This has much deeper, long-term implications than the cases being decided or even the religious freedom outcome. It is the tip of the spear in exempting the wealthy from participating in society--financially or otherwise--and will lead to accelerating income inequality and the consequent problems associated with it. It's all of a piece with the tax cut, Citizen's United, and the aggressive use of the public charge rule in immigration. If they have their way, the rich will live in their own society, leaving the rest of us to feud over the scraps that remain.
37
@Mark I think you should re-read the 1st amendment. It does not in any way say you cannot use public funds for religious schools/operations, etc. What it DOES say is that the government cannot endorse a specific religion. So long as the rules apply equally to all schools of all religious or non-religious denominations it does not violate the 1st amendment.
3
@Justin
As far as Mark needing to re-read the 1st amendment: John Leland, a Baptist minister alive at the time of the drafting of the 1st amendment (and an ardent supporter of it), gave us a definition of the establishment of religion that clearly shows us what it was back then: A government mandate of the time, manner, or place of a religious practice was an establishment of religion. (See the Virginia requirement for preachers needing a license to preach or the Connecticut mandatory tax for the support of local churches.) Distribution of federal funds to private religious schools is the religious practice of a tithe by any other name, and will be enforced through civil or criminal penalties for failure to pay taxes. I currently have the right to voluntarily support (or not support) any religious institution I choose. I will lose that right through the court’s creation of a de facto establishment of religion, perhaps to Justin’s joy. (By the way, reserving freedom of religion for a faction of religious conservatives robs it from the rest of the citizens. It will never apply to “Everytown, USA”.)
15
The church has breached the church/state wall since day one of our republic. The notion that partisan politics isn't preached from the pulpit is laughable. It's time we end the charade and tax the churches like any other business.
335
@Mike Would you approve the taxation of mosques and temples for other religions outside of Christianity? People always love coming after the institutions of Christianity but balk at any of the same requirements for other religions within the USA.
5
@Henry
A reason Christianity is a target for some people is because it is the dominant and most influential religion in this nation. Mosques and temples are not competing to dominate our political arena in the way some forms of Christianity are. Also, his tone seemed to say he would be fine with that.
15
@Henry
Evidence, please?
4
Except that, strictly speaking, religious schools are not really schools at all but, rather, instruments of indoctrination and mind control. Public money should be used for education, not indoctrination.
16
@Ed But Trump and the GOP recently gave Rupert Murdoch's business kingdom and the individual multi-millionaire individual stars of Fox News bigger public money tax cuts that they could have ever dreamed of.
1
When businesses compete, we freely choose which to do business with and our money follows our choice: McDonalds or Burger King or taco or sub or sushi. But when government provides a business service, the 'customers' have to pay for it whether they like it or not; indeed, whether they even use it or not. So government services reduce freedom, diversity, and accountability compared to business services, and reduce competitive pressure for improvement. Bluntly, government services (including crony capitalism, using government to stifle competition) tend to be morally inferior to business services.
This applies to schools. If the money freely followed each student, instead of following the greedy bureaucracy, we'd have more freedom diversity, accountability, and improvement than we have now. This case, tho odd--shutting down the program reminds me of shutting down public schools after Brown vs Board--could be a step away from the wrong direction, a step in the right direction: freedom.
Jesus is libertarian, and He didn't assign schools to government; read the lists of jobs for government in Romans 13 and I Timothy 2.
@Andrew Lohr
It's very convenient how Jesus always seems to agree with the political beliefs of his followers. Accommodating guy, that Jesus.
4
The Times needs to interview churches outside the evangelical/Catholic axis. If they did they'd find that most churches consider "religious freedom" a non-issue. I work for a mainline Protestant church and never hear anybody complain about lacking "religious freedom". It's a euphemism for certain denominations seeking special privileges.
16
As an atheist I probably should be on Montana's side. But seeing how poor public education has become for many, I have sympathy for parents who want an alternative that's otherwise unaffordable.
1
@kwb The public education in my district is excellent. I live in a very affluent area. The public education in a nearby district that's riddled with shuttered business and falling down homes is abysmal.
The problem is 100% how we FUND our schools -- the property tax in each district, for that district. This is what you should be concerned about.
1
Imaginary case. A family in Burlington, VT, has 4 kids, 11-14. The city gives each of them vouchers for education costs.... let's say $2,500 each (I have no idea what the actual funding for Burlington schools might be!) One kid chooses the city junior high (secular); another, a charter school; another, the local Catholic school; and another, a Protestant school, for reasons of her own.
Sounds fair to me. I thought Americans believed in competition.
2
@vermontague
While capitalism is, in my opinion, the true religion of the US, belief in competition doesn't change the fact that public monies cannot be used to advance a particular religious view.
Church schools teach religious beliefs, and therefore are not eligible for public funds. If they are so good, they should be able to compete for private funds.
6
@vermontague The purpose of religious schools is to inculcate religion. "The First Amendment's Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” This clause not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another."
Imaginary case: A family in Montana has 4 kids, 11-14. The city gives each of them vouchers for education costs.... let's say $2,500 each. All 4 kids choose a Christian education, because there are no other choices (read the article). So the Christian schools get beaucoup bucks, but the other religious and public schools are starved.
Sounds like a set-up to me. Competition is for business, not primary education... unless of course there's something else going on, under the surface.
1
@April I'm glad you began with "the true religion of the US...." is capitalism. In fact, all schools teach some sort of "world view," and none is free from a (religious?) perspective.
We are blessed, in our small town, to have a private school corporation, to which our town sends all its students. It is academically excellent, and philosophically broad-based.... I need to send a donation. I'm glad this came up!
When we humans feel the need to protect our imaginations, in this case our gods, other humans and those with other gods or similar gods perceived differently usually suffer the consequences. In this case a loss of education based on facts and science instead of wishes.
6
Just a thank you to Linda Greenhouse for her explanations of what are often obtuse legal proceedings. Look forward to her columns.
12
So typical. Conservative judges say they decide based on a strict adherence to what the Constitution says and what James Madison was thinking in the 1780's, EXCEPT when it affects their personal beliefs and constituencies.
17
It is my understanding that one of the reasons that Catholic schools originally accepted that there was not to be government financial support was to prevent governmental intrusion into their curricula and other areas in which they wished to have autonomy. With the money would come the requirement that they conform to general practices and procedures which they found antithetical to Catholic teachings. Fair enough. Tuition vouchers and other such stratagems that come with government oversight may not be so bad -- if the religious schools that accept these benefits also accept any restrictions that may accompany the aid.
6
We have a similar situation here in Ontario, Canada. There are 4 public school boards: English Non-Catholic, English Catholic, French Non-Catholic, French Catholic. When I registered my non-Catholic son for first grade recently at a public school, I filled out a form where I wanted my municipal taxes to go. Nevertheless, the government, with taxpayers' money funds Catholic schools but not schools of other religions (Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, non-Catholic Christian denominations) - parents need to pay for these other schools with their own money. Now, this set up is because of historical reasons and is naturally hard to change. People who are receiving some benefit or privilege are loathe to give it up and can find all sorts of reasons to justify it. The Catholic schools do provide excellent educations and some local boards are loosening attendance rules so that non-Catholics may attend but doing it discreetly and can still turn away students. Officially, Canada is a 'secular' country but these anomalies exist throughout. For me, if the choice came down to having my kids obtain an excellent education at a local Catholic school versus a worse education at a public school, I'd likely choose the former even if would mean obligatory religious instruction in a religion different to our own.
2
@Wonderer
I often hear this: That Catholic schools offer superior schooling.
Given the shallow intellectual depth of the Supreme Court of both present and past Justices, what I see instead, is a superior concept of banding together.
That's it.
So, I am totally unsurprised that the Catholic organizations have taken up "riding on the Libertarian coat-tails". But, I will point out that those coat-tails for a Libertarian state that 'education' is NOT a public right, it is the total responsibility for the parent to educate - or not educate - their child.
You need to wonder why Catholics are teeming up with this group. Is it simply because the Libertarians state that the reproductive rights of a woman "are to be left up to local standards", not to the woman?
5
@rosa
I should clarify that standardized testing results show that on average Catholic schools score slightly better than non-Catholic here in Ontario but that needs to be controlled for income and other factors. There are excellent public schools throughout Ontario and it is generally safe to say that those in higher income neighbourhoods tend to have better outcomes and scores - Catholic or not. Looking back, I feel that I received an excellent public school education if I were able to evaluate it honestly.
@Wonderer: Jews in the US have always privately funded Hebrew School.
4
I don't understand the argument that says it "penalizes or interferes with a person's free expression of religion" if they can't get government monies to send their kids to religious schools. Does it stop them from praying or worshipping or believing the way they want?
This sounds to me like too many other cases (refusing to bake cakes for gay couples; refusing to pay for insurance for employees who want contraception) where people extend their definition of "free expression of religion" to include a whole lot of other behaviors, like forcing their beliefs on others.
Those of us who don't believe in war as a result of our religion are still obliged to pay for it. And I am sure there are lots of other examples.
I was raised very religiously and attended public schools. Nothing in my experiences at those schools impinged on my religious freedom.
What am I missing?
26
@J. Reel: "Free exercise" of religion is voluntary. The government cannot coerce it.
1
When I read this column it raised three important questions for me:
1) Why do conservatives tout states’ rights except when it comes to religion, gun control, abortion, legalizing marijuana, sanctuary cities, and opening up most coastal waters to drilling just to name a few? I thought they felt the federal government was the problem?
2) If the religious schools in Montana use federal funds shouldn’t they pay federal taxes?
3) If the federally funded scholarship money in Montana was used by students to attend a Muslim, Jewish, or any other non-Christian religious school would things be different? I realize non-Christian religious schools in Montana are basically non-existent. But what if this was California or New York?
Answers please.
62
@Gaston Corteau I agree with all of your points/questions; especially #2. I am stumped as to why all organizations that promote a particular belief system are tax exempt in the USA.
10
@Dbell48
It is supposed to be so that they stay out of secular society.
Well, I guess that bird has flown!
5
@Gaston Corteau: Government purportedly interferes with God's will, which they believe to be their own thoughts in language. Their id is their God.
5
I think the best bet here is to completely stop using public money to fund private schools.... period. Using public funding to pay for the public school system should be a complete no-brainer: its the common purse, so it should fun public and not private services - end of story. Education in the USA is both highly politisized and under-prioritized and the push to split funds allocated to this top-tier task, between the public school system and a variety of private schools, is eroding even further, the ability of the USA to properly educate its future citizens. As to whether religious schools should get public funding, well that's completely ridiculous: if they want to keep their children separate from the rest of the world and teach them dubious things such as "The world and probably the rest of the universe was magically created 6,000 years ago, followed by a worlwide flood 4500 years ago. This is the truth written in our Holy Book and science is completely wrong whenever it contradicts the Word of God."... then we at the very least, shouldn't give them public money to indoctrinate their children in this or any other specific manner. To me, this is that most uncommon of all senses - common sense!!
60
@Joseph Ross Mayhew: Finland, reportedly a very happy country today, had been impoverished until the central government created a broad-base federally funded and managed public education system providing a consistent experience for students subject to relocation.
17
@Joseph Ross Mayhew
In a Brooklyn public pre-school, 4 year olds are being told they can choose whether to be a boy or a girl. Doesn't sound much better.
Very few say science is wrong when it is not supported by the bible. A good deal of science is rejected when it is not supported by leftists.
@Steve Bolger
Thank you, Steve.
It is insane that this country bows and scrapes to "local standards" of every school board.
We are a mobile country and it is hit-or-miss whether a child gets the same math book even if they are simply moving across town.
Throw in 'religious schools' and it is a toxic mess.
6
Why in the earlier case wasn’t the religious school that wanted to use federal funds for its playground denied that option and told to use their own funds? Are religious schools and institutions required to conform to governmental regulations about safety and accessibility?
12
I studied the Trinity Lutheran case in a class I taught at the time. We read all the briefs and listened to oral arguments. It was, of course, not about playgrounds at all. It was about persistent insistence on the imposition of Christianity on secular society. It was a stepping stone and this case will be a boulder.
I watched yesterday's impeachment trial and experienced involuntary revulsion as the Chief Justice introduced the chaplain for an opening prayer followed by the Pledge of Allegiance with its unconstitutional "Under God" phrase. The sheep of the Senate bleated with compliant sanctimony.
While shrinking, there remains a powerful plurality of the devout who are determined to overlay a patina of religion on every facet of American life.
The Trump administration's many vile dimensions are obvious. But among them, not enough attention is paid to the dangerous, primitive values that drive much of the policy and practice. Mike Pompeo, William Barr and others are hellbent on placing their religious beliefs in the forefront of our nation's life. Even more than Trump's buffoonery and dishonesty, this is the greatest risk to the country I no longer recognize. I'd leave if not for an extended family I cherish.
109
@Barking Doggerel Well said. I'm a boomer but the Milennials can't take control of our political system soon enough. Their values are my values, not the gibberish my fellow boomers are 'selling'.
7
I’d leave it but no other country would take me.
@Maggie Maggie, Gorsuch and Kavanagh are GenX, not Millenials (born between 1980 and 2015)
The government should provide good education to its future citizens. This should be done in a public setting with no influence by one's party or religious belief system. If a parent wants to teach their kids about religion, it is their choice but the government (others in society) should not be made to pay for it. The only payment should be done to secular public schools where we should provide the best education possible. In recent times private education has been subsidized by public funding. This should be stopped and that money should be routed back to public schools.
45
The notion of religious freedom has been turned on its head by those who are perfectly free to worship as they please anywhere they please. No government or law forbids the practice of their chosen religion. What they are actually demanding is a state-funded privilege for their religion at the expense of all other religious or non-religious beliefs. Would these same people support their tax dollars going to Muslim schools or Buddhist schools or Hindu schools? Likely not. They believe that the US should be for Christians only (though it is no a theocracy and never has been), and they want the rest of us to pay for their right to indoctrinate their children to follow their beliefs. I don’t care how they indoctrinate their children at home or in schools they pay for. Just don’t ask me to support the teaching of fake science and whitewashed history in their religious schools.
105
Using having tax-dollars to support religious education seems like a pretty clear violation of the establishment clause in the first amendment. It is, in effect, state support for a religion and should not be allowed under any circumstances. It's fine if if parents want to send their children to a private religious school but they need to pay for it themselves.
37
@Dave I suggest that the church-state separation isn't addressed in the Constitution itself, but only in court rulings interpreting the constitution. It sp;ecifically addresses only what the U.S. Congress,not necessarily what individual state legislatures may or may not do. Also, it wouldn't appear to ban or endorse giving funding to individual citizens who might spend that money in religious schools.
1
@Dave Allowing parents to make their own decisions as to where their tax dollars go for their children's education is hardly an "establishment of religion". No one is forcing their neighbors or the state to comply to a specific religion. It is giving the freedom to choose.
@DMH
The words, "shall make no law," mean that religion is its own as far as my taxes are concerned. I will not be forced to pay a dime for a single brick in any religion's house.
3
There should be some mention of the history behind Montana's constitutional prohibition of tax money for religious schools. Most of these provisions were state versions of the failed "Blaine" amendment to the US Constitution which was fueled by anti-Catholic animus. Catholic schools were established because of the overtly Protestant orientation of the public schools of the time.
In an ideal world, taxpayer funds would be allocated to students, and could be used at any school that met state standards.
2
@J. Waddell
"In an ideal world, taxpayer funds would be allocated to students, and could be used at any school that met state standards."
Then in an ideal world religious schools receiving federal or state taxpayer funding should also have to pay federal or state taxes. Remember, I said that's in an ideal world. Not the world we live in currently.
23
@J. Waddell
How any state could have standards that include the acceptance of teaching that there is a guy in the sky who controls everything and everybody is more frightening than the fires, floods and pestilence we're now experiencing. We're doomed.
2
I suppose it would be too much to ask the issue be decided not on the basis of ideologies but on what best serves the public good and the education of children.
14
Our Founding Fathers were exquisitely aware of the problems with a theocratic state. Many of their ancestors fled the religious discrimination of the English Crown, Parliament, and Anglican Church, only to establish equally intolerant and discriminatory Puritan colonial goverments. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson fled from Massachusetts Bay Colony in fear for their lives because they did not conform. Non-Puritans could not vote, yet were taxed to support Puritan ministers. Many of the church elite infused social and governmental institutions with their brand of bigotry. No wonder the authors of the Constitution and of its first ten amendments did not invoke God anywhere in the text. No wonder their concern to protect the people from a state religion. State supported religious schools are a slippery slope designed to undermine one of the most basic protections against government intrusion we hold as citizens.
50
I grew up in St. Louis and attended only Lutheran schools until I went to graduate school. My schools wouldn't even take government milk money for fear that the government would gain a foothold and a lever to influence curriculum. I still believe in the basic principle that if you want a private school for your child, pay for it. Don't ask for tax dollars. And yes, continue to meet your obligation to support public education by paying your fair share of taxes.
47
I f the court agrees, does that mean we can expect to receive property taxes from currently exempt religious institutions to offset these new costs?
56
@Sam Surely, you jest. These are folk who want your cake so they can eat it too.
3
Ms. Greenhouse, as always, I look forward to learning from you about the intricacies the Supreme Court. However, given the nation is currently watching our democracy die in the senate some thoughts from you about the role of Supreme Court in the destruction of the rule of law and the Constitution, and how to stop it, would be valued.
Looking back, one can't help to notice that since 1982 the Federalist Society has worked to seed the federal courts, the Justice Department, and congress with conservative/libertarian lawyers seeking to advance the interests of corporations, great wealth, and the religious right. Five member of the Supreme Court are current or past members of the Federalist Society.
Using a playbook similar to Putin's alliance with oligarchs and the Russian Orthodox Church Republicans have steadily taken control of key levers of power — the senate, federal courts, and the executive branch.
That said, lawyers, seeking wealth and power, planned and executed the takeover of the courts, now the nations needs lawyers, that value our democracy, to step up and protect the rule of law and the Constitution.
30
“School Choice Battle May Boost Religious Freedom”
"Religious Freedom" is newspeak for discrimination. There is no "freedom" about it. What the proponents want is a legalized way of forcing their religious views on someone else. That is blatantly against the first amendment.
If these parents who are members of religious organizations want taxpayer dollars to fund their scholarships, then let their religious organizations pay the same kind of taxes secular groups do to fund them. It's time to end the tax exemptions for religious groups.
70
@Max Dither --There is a huge difference between "freedom of religion", which give us all the right to chose, and enumerated in our founding documents, and "religious liberty," which suggests that there be no limitations for these extremists.
19
@Max Dither
Well said. Thank you.
1
Would these plaintiffs bring this case if the school were Muslim or for atheists only? This case opens the prospect of government meddling in religion as well as the opposite situation, religion meddling in our government. Perhaps this is already the case as the SC seems intent on allowing Christianity to become our state religion. Where is the secular fairness that our founders desired as they separated church from state?
31
@just Robert - The US is/was obviously basically Christian in character and should be again. Overtly. Our society is failing because of our intended excision, legal and otherwise, of our moral values. We need God and our Christian values back desperately and allowing a few social engineering lib 'justices' et al. to forestall that is socially suicidal.
@Andy Eppink Christian values at least as far as they are universal, love compassion and standing for the down trodden and poor, is fine. It is the part where Christians try to tell others what to do, how to think or try to suppress the ideas of others that bother me. Christians seem to think they have an edge on morality, but their support of Trump's corruption to suggests otherwise.
1
@just Robert - What makes Trump tolerable, indeed deserving of enthusiastic support, is his stalwart Pro Life bent. Most politicians and 'judges' are cowardly liars regarding that issue.
Trump has his obvious faults otherwise.
The Constitution that we celebrate was written by deists, but for over two centuries more orthodox believers have been telling us that ours is a Christian nation. The latest battles over church and state are only the latest installment in a long running battle between Christian chauvinists and their more secular-minded opponents. In today's campaign, Protestants and Catholics, at one time bitter enemies, are now allies. But that alliance will likely fracture should Jefferson's wall separating church and state begin to crumble. Historians know that religious sectarianism is no less volatile than political sectarianism, and even more productive of strife because the perceived stakes are so much higher. Conservatives on the high court who think that they are doing religion a favor by taking a sledgehammer to Jefferson's wall might come to rue their decision in this case, should they side with those who see America as a Christian nation. Even if they don't, those of us who fear the entrance of religion into the public sphere surely will.
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@Stephen N
I've read about how "Christian" the founding fathers were. Washington attended church but refused to take communion. When his minister complained that he was setting a bad example, Washington said he would stay home on days when communion was served. Franklin said he would never trust a church with his money unless it was for a specific cause he admired, such as funding an orphanage. Thomas Paine ridiculed the notion that Jesus was the "Son of God", comparing it to pagan myths that Hercules was the son of Zeus.
1
@Stephen N
Religion is everywhere in the public sphere. It's our motto, it's in our courtrooms, on our money, lurking now in our pledge of allegiance, and handed to us to take a vow on. It's crawling all over the place.
Why is it that whenever I hear about questions of school choice, and the argument is framed in separation of church and state and religious freedom, I still smell a money fight - very large forces battling to maintain control of a limited education fund.
It's the same feeling I get when the insurance industry hears proposals about a "public option". Show me the money.
10
In my little town, the children of people who are not Catholic can attend the local Catholic school. However, their tuition is substantially higher than that of students whose parents ARE Catholic. Isn't this religious discrimination? Shouldn't all students enjoy the same tuition at Catholic schools? If parity is the rule that I think everybody should be the same.
19
When I went to Catholic school in the 1950's many children from poorer Catholic families paid less or no tuition than the "official" rate. I'm not sure what the non-Catholics paid. But one can argue that it's the same principle as out of state students paying more at state public universities, the members of the community in question can be presumed to be supporting the school already through their local/state taxes (for universities) or church contributions. My Methodist and Republican father would have rejected any suggestion that he receive tax dollars for my tuition since it was a choice freely made to support two systems.
4
No. Obviously not. A little common sense (not common anymore) is in order. Nongroup members obviously aren't entitled to all the priveliges of the group. If they want those priveliges, join the group! Just common sense. So out of vogue anymore.
1
@Susan
In Brooklyn, only Catholic families who financially support the parish affiliated with the school get reduced tuition. Non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics pay the higher rate.
2
Well, the flip side of this active state financial support for exercise of "religious freedom" argument is that people needing to use Medicaid or other ACA health insurance for birth control and abortion should not be denied.
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@Elizabeth MacLean: God does not negotiate. God demands.
The US is stupid beneath contempt to give any public policy credence to anyone who claims to know what any "God" thinks. It is only fertilizer for narcissism leading to toxic mental blooms.
1
I am strongly opposed to the SCOTUS decision, and believe that tax monies should not be diverted to private schools.
As a point of interest to a small percentage of parents and others, private-independent schools are governed by a board of trustees and may or may not have a religious affiliation. Tuition and fund-raising supports them. They do not/should not receive any monies from the government, though a tax break has unfortunately allowed that on the state tax level in the past.
In short, while "school choice" is a loaded term, I do think that each parent should have greater ability to make decisions about schools their child attends. I support any school that will benefit a particular child, but I also believe public schools need greater reform -- and that tax dollars shouldn't be siphoned off to private schools to undermine that, or to shortchange students or teachers.
If parents want their children in a school determined by religion and not genuine learning, fine, but they shouldn't feel they deserve tax breaks or other government support.
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Why is my freedom taken away by hospitals being owned by the Roman Catholic Church which denies services based on THEIR not MY beliefs? These public institutions should be forced to either offer all services or sell. It is their choice to leave the field. I have no choice. Of course, I also have no choice in acknowledging the Supreme Court.
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I don’t go to Burger King to get a Popeyes chicken sandwich. The medical services market is an open market. No one makes you go to any hospital, much less a hospital that does not provide the attention you want or need.
I support legal abortion, and your right to choose a hospital that provides it. I do not support your right to compel a Dr to perform a procedure he or she chooses not to.
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@poslug
I think you are right and I think all Catholic hospitals should be closed down immediately. Of course, when that happens, besides not being able to get your tubes tied at a local hospital you won't be able to give birth in one either since it won't be there anymore.
I'm pretty sure most of these hospitals will shut down if forced to perform abortions, euthanasia, etc. Who's going to replace them?
Elections matter. Without McConnell and the Republicans holding the Senate, Merrick Garland would have been on the Supreme Court, and separation of Church and State would be preserved. Without President Trump, neither Gorsuch nor Kavanaugh would be there, perverting our nation's laws for their far rightwing agenda. Each and every one of us, with as much time and energy as we can spare, must vote, register people to vote, volunteer for Democratic political campaigns, and talk to friends, family members, and even strangers in the grocery line about why we must vote for the Democrat in every election at every level. I don't care if the nominee doesn't make me swoon and send a thrill up my leg. I don't care if the Democratic nominee isn't my first choice. Because it's not just climate change; it's not just economic inequality; it's not just combatting racism vs. fomenting racism; it's not just rolling back consumer and environmental protections vs. securing them; it's all of that, plus the very concept of rule of law and separation of powers that is at stake. We are in a war with regressive forces that want to take us back to pre-enlightenment times, and we better start acting like it by uniting against them, because the other side sure is.
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A school that accepts public funding should be accessible to all students, not just a handpicked few, with the same responsibilities to provide the same range of services.
And we see why the evangelicals like Donald Trump.
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Instead of the court looking at legal precedents, they need to glance at what happens to nations that embrace theocratic norms for governing---i.e. the middle east. And, to make matters worse in this regard, we are becoming a more secular nation by the day. What religions are left behind are extreme forms of mystical belief systems that no government should be supporting.
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What if the religious school taught witchcraft? Paganism? Animal sacrifice? Adolescent marriage? Voodoo? Since when is religion confined to the three Abrahamic faiths? How can any legal argument be restricted to just those three?
If we cross that line of public funding for private religious institutions, then that opens the door for public funding for just about any belief system, which can be categorized as a religion. If funding is restricted to just two or three faiths, then that is the establishment of state religion which violates the Constitution.
This is a line we should not cross.
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@Bruce Rozenblit
Yeah, just think about those Scientologists.
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@Bruce Rozenblit Exactly! Church of Scientology needs to jump on the wagon here, to prove your point. Or, heaven forbid, a madrassah.
14
We crossed that line generations ago. The only question left is when the rest of us are going to decide to fight back.
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There will be many bad things that come from allowing public funds in private schools. First, it subsidizes those with higher incomes, and drains from the bank of funds that might go to needy public schools. Second, it breaks down standards for education. There is nothing to prevent private schools from including totally false curriculum in their classrooms. But perhaps this will come back to bite the religious right, that is if this whole mess is in any way authentic and principled. I wonder how it will go when the publicly funded private madrases or the Timothy Leary Academy for Space Science starts demanding equal treatment and consideration and claiming that other beliefs are an assault on their religious freedom.
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@Brian
I am against any educational funding system that "drains from the bank of funds that might go to needy public schools." Public schools must be the best schools, bar none. Obviously, this would mean a completely new way of financing public education - wealthy districts should no longer have superior schools to schools serving the poor. I am not against religious groups providing religious education on their own property and at their own expense but ALL children must attend public schools and each of those public schools MUST be superior to any of the co-called "best" charter schools. To my mind education for profit is as nasty as health care for profit.
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I am bothered by the words of Justice Gorsuch: “...and general principles here do not permit discrimination against religious exercise, playground or not”.
My worry is that the real message is that it will be ok to discriminate against others based on religious belief, involving things much more important than playgrounds.
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“Religious education serves a purpose, inculcating religious values and preserving religious traditions. A parochial school is not just another neighborhood school down the block.”
When I was growing up, I had plenty of Catholic friends whose parents wouldn’t have dreamed of putting them into any of the parochial schools, not just because they generally had a poor reputation for the quality of teaching (particularly from the nuns,) and low academic standards, and an extremely “parochial” worldview, but from what we teenagers could discern, they seemed to have a disproportionately large number of students whose parents sent them there for disciplinary reasons. (if that failed, they were off to military academies, like Donald Trump)
I received an excellent public school education in the 50s and 60s and find the current judicial attempts to give special treatment and taxpayer dollars to religious schools of any stripe to be unconscionable and frightening.
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I wish to respond to this common trope. When I went to catholic schools in the 50s and 60s, our education easily equaled or exceeded public schools. Most nuns attended post graduate courses in summer. Many of my high school teachers held more than one masters degree.
From first grade through catholic(Jesuit) university, I was exposed to an open and largely humanistic version of the catholic faith. I owe much to wonderful, kind, intelligent women who taught me much.
Subsequent events caused me, many years later, to have fundamental differences with today’s Catholic Church. I no longer actively participate in organized religion. However, my spiritual self is strong because of my education at the hands of wonderful teachers.
3
The Constitution provides for freedom of religion not freedom from religion. As long as the recipient is free to use the voucher in secular or parochial schools I see no problem. The greater problem is the reduction in funding for public schools, while I strongly support quality public education, I would like to see more of the money spent on teacher compensation and less money spent on administrators and bureaucracy. The best way to “social justice” is quality education for all.
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@T Smith Au contraire. As a lawyer, I feel duty-bound to inform you that the Constitution does indeed provide for freedom from religion: "Congress shall make no law RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The anti-establishment clause is directed precisely at keeping government free from religion.
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The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is the issue before the Court. The First Amendment protects citizens from a State Establishment of Religion. The Establishment Clause was set in the context of the Church of England, the Established Church of the Monarchy, with the Mother Country’s limitations on the civil rights of Catholics and Jews, limitations overcome early in Maryland, with its significant Catholic population.
Using tax money for vouchers for parochial religious education raises the issue of an Establishment of the Catholic or other Church in the State, whether or not a private citizen should feel her rights are not affected to freely choose whether or not to worship. The Freedom of Religion and the Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment are separate.
So, the issue before the Court is not whether or not one or more otherwise neutral persons are OK with the vouchers, in that they feel uninhibited in their own religion or its lack. Rather, the issue is whether there appears in the law to be an element of state sponsorship of any particular religion.
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@T Smith What if that "religious education" affects, for example, the science taught in these schools? Do we want public tax funds supporting notions like the earth was created in a few days, is a couple thousand years old, contraception is evil, and we should expect Jesus's return to the planet any day now?
Religion almost always entails belief in the supernatural, and therein lies a problem. When it comes to belief in the supernatural, anything goes?
Homosexuality is sinful, God won't allow destructive climate change, it's impossible to reach heaven unless you're one of us...the list is endless.
Our Constitution contains no mention of any god, and the framers prohibited any religious test for public office. They were quite wary of government supporting religion. So should we be.
3
The relentless drive to use undefined phrases like religious freedom and religious liberty to stretch the constitutional mandate to separate church and state has its parallel in the present Republican reinterpretation of the Constitution to condone any presidential action, turning our Constitution into a playground for legal semantics and fanciful logic.
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Another great piece by Linda Greenhouse, explaining quite clearly what is a complicated issue. Since she quoted William Yeats' famous poem, she might have ended, as the poem did, with the question: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
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And we wonder why we've become so obviously divided a nation and too actively hostile politically. We're perpetuating and increasingly supporting the very schisms that defeat the sense of shared citizenship required to advance as a nation. Our Constitution was certainly intended to be fairly and reasonably interpreted and applied to varying circumstances. In doing so, however, we're losing sight of its straightforward basic principles and contorting its meanings such that it becomes very different in meaning and effect. Increasingly and more openly, justices with avowed biases and agendas, despite their protestations, do not serve us - the nation as a whole - well. Rather, they advocate for the causes that divide us even further.
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What people do on their own time is their own business. As long as their activities do not directly harm others, go for it. However, no one who has read history will deny the tendency of religious adherents, once they have manipulated society into recognizing how special they are, to credit their own specious assertions that they should be free in the name of their deity to intimidate and coerce.
Back when reality was sheer guesswork, educating children that fairy tales were the truth was only one among many sad choices. Ignorant of consequences, multiple societies assigned education to those whose edification agendas were merged with their calls to spread their "faith."
Elsewhere today, an author worries about the magnified impact of the Coronavirus in a country where so many citizens have now deny science and so deprive their children of needed inoculations for measles and other diseases. Although the Christians' origin story, along with the hierarchy of deities and fellow travelers, might actually be true, meaning that those of us who don't believe will suffer dire post-life consequences, temporal consequences will be suffered not only by those who appear to think themselves purer than science but also by so many they eventually infect.
I was schooled by Catholics. I know more about seraphim than how my digestive system works. Subsidizing such a pernicious waste of children's time subordinates government to religion, which hasn't worked yet. You could look it up.
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@Jack Mahoney Well said. More stupid things have been done throughout history b/o religion, sex, and love (probably in that order) than all other reasons combined.
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"The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it". (Billy Graham Feb 1981 Parade Magazine) I would go further to say that evangelical/fundamentalist Christian leadership has a vested interest in the Political Right in order "to manipulate it".
Face it, the conservative Christian movement is also a massive voting block. It elected Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz. There is noticeable connection between conservative religion and our public education system. Of the 20 states that spend the least on public education, 17 are solidly Republican. Yes also voting block!
The Republican Party and the conservative Christian movement share many of the same interests. That interest includes the favoring of Christian faith based private education in order to preserve their power base. A strong public education system threatens this hold on our political system and the social fabric in Red States. The concept of Separation of Church and State is under attack!
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This will impact Ohio in a big way. It will reinforce the move to becoming a red state. Families here, especially Catholics are big proponents of parochial schools. Almost all of the money from Ohio's main tuition voucher programs - 97 percent of it - flows to private religious schools.Christian schools, as expected, receive the bulk -- more than $140 million in state tax dollars a year.
And Catholic and other Christian schools in Cleveland are the biggest winners, thanks to a Cleveland-only voucher program that was the first in the state when it started in 1996.
Who uses state voucher dollars at which schools will be a major part of the debate this spring as the Ohio legislature considers a bill to expand Ohio's private school tuition aid to more middle class families. The House and Ohio Senate are at odds here on how to shrink the programs, due to a flawed metric that defines "low performing" schools. It is now a back door to funneling money to families at any (high) income level, subsidizing their child's parochial education.
As a result, the number of schools from which parents are now eligible to pull their kids -- and send to them to a private schools – is more than double last year's. The number will go from just less than 500 to 1,200 in the next academic year.
Surprise. It will bankrupt the public school districts and destroy secular education. Just what the "religious right" wanted all along. This is the definition of "self-fulfilling prophecy."
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@USNA73 It’s also what Libertarians, who have taken over the Republican Party, want.
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@USNA73
Agree. I live in Ohio. It’s school funding was found unconstitutional but never remedied. Many charter schools did a horrible job without consequences, underperforming poor public schools. Charter schools could cherry pick students to avoid difficult children, were not required to test the students, etc. worst then some of the religious schools were the for profit schools. They hid their finances from the public and skimmed profits oof the back of the students and public schools. Disgraceful
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@Kb Ayn Rand has no place in pubic education. The single most important element that distinguished America from the rest of the world was our embrace of a public education for all since 1821.
3
At a time when public education was still being funded, I got a perfectly good education, judging by my ability to keep up in college with graduates of elite boarding schools.
And this was in a small factory town in New England, not on the Main Line out of Philadelphia, or Beverly Hills, or some such.
It is criminal that we are not giving our children the same opportunity now. How about the religious freedom, not to mention educational opportunities, of people who choose NOT to be a "Christian"? How much more of our lives is being compromised by pandering to these "Christians"?
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The desegregation of the public school system led to an expansion of Christian schools. The word Christian in many instances was actually a euphemism for a return to segregation, though I don't think this was the case prior to the desegregation of public schools.
Choice is a right, but it should not also be a privilege. If private schools (religious or otherwise) are to be supported by vouchers, then they should be subject to the same rules as public schools. They are not and therefore they are less expensive to operate than the public schools.
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@Robert Scull I couldn’t agree more. A family member left private school education because the teacher pay in public schools was higher (think about that for a moment) and because the restrictive curriculum took away from her teaching freedoms.
If you want equal treatment for your religious school you get equal treatment all the way down to the return to the Ronald Reagan ketchup is a vegetable standards we just returned to thanks to the GOP.
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@Robert Scull So true. For example, they must accept any student who applies, including students with disabilities and students whose home language is not English, providing educational services to those students that meet the same standards that public schools must meet.
6
If one reads the oral argument transcript and some of the briefs, the argument at the Court turns out to be particularly convoluted. The Court is tasked with understanding the motive behind legislative, constitutional convention and court actions. The justices seemed to understand that in order to remove all possible "taint", the result was to remove the benefit of a voucher from all parents (vouchers went to the schools indirectly). It was the blanket nature of the removal that got the argument going on the history of anti-Catholic animus. Ms. Greenhouse is correct that the idea of "well, maybe a smidge of teeny weeny support that might go to a religious school indirectly" seemed to resonate with some justices, but others did not buy in. This case goes to show that a tiny minority, striking with the right resonant message at the right time, can have a huge social effect.
8
While I am tempted to screed away about my view of the issues raised, let me simply affirm that Ms. Greenhouse is a treasure, and I am so very grateful to be able to read her well-informed and well-constructed columns whenever they appear. Thank you, Ms. Greenhouse, for writing them.
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And I would add a plea for her to gratify us with her insights at least once a week! Desperate times call for heroic measures!
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@Michael
Agree 100%, 1000%, 1,000,000%. Linda Greenhouse strikes me as the most intelligent and skillful writer on the Times’ entire staff of opinion writers, and should be given space to analyze all manner of subjects, judicial or otherwise.
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@ex-pat Pat Amen.
4
Nothing could be more clear than what our founding fathers wrote about the place of religion in government. Their secular constitution says it has no place.
A government using taxpayer dollars to pay the tuition at a private religious school which teaches religious beliefs and religious based revisionist science and history cannot be considered anything but unconstitutional.
If a parent wants to protect their children from truth, they can pay for that themselves.
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@David Bible The Constitution says there is "No Establishment of Religion," which I (and others) read to mean that the USA cannot have an official church, like the Church of England.
"Nothing could be more clear" is an unfounded claim in this context.
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@David Bible
Well, yes. But do you actually think Republicans care about the Constitution? They have happily installed a GOP dictatorship and ensured NOTHING Trump does is impeachable.
Don't be surprised when the 2020 election is cancelled because Trump thinks, "It's in the country's best interest for me to remain in power until I die and at that point Ivanka will become queen. In fact, I am simply going to jail Democrats, close newspapers, and disband Congress. I am the supreme leader. I can do anything I want."
3
These are obviously unconstitutional laws on their face and there is no reasonable reading of the constitution that can say otherwise. The problem we have is that officially, the constitution says whatever the Supreme Court says it does. So to rewrite the constitution all that is required is that a bunch of religious looneys be put on the court. No constitutional convention is necessary, no amendments need to be voted on. It is the quickest way to subvert the country and it the subversion that the rest of us have stood back and allowed to happen. We now have bipartisan regimes which are enabling the court to rewrite the constitution one decision at a time. It is a slow but deliberate drift that is outside of the power of the electorate to halt. Supreme Court decisions are essentially above the law because they are the foundation of law. Congress itself cannot write a law that over turns SC reinterpretation. The court has essentially become a new legislative branch of government that is above all others. Theocratic decisions from this level are as unassailable as the will of the Ayatollah in Iran. All theocracy must ultimately be rooted in the court system and we are seeing the beginning of a religious court on the Federal level. This influence has already changed our relationships to the rest of the largely secular world and we are joining with the non secular world in a variety of political and military ways. It can happen here. It already has.
3
As ever seems the case, the "freedom" that religions want boils down to state support -- either in terms of access to secular money or special rules allowing them to behave in ways that would otherwise be forbidden. In other words, it is not THEIR freedom they are arguing for, it is a claim on everyone ELSE's freedom.
38
The introduction of this article is very important, highlighting that USA Today has fallen for the lies by placing "Religious Freedom" in the headline. The phrase has been repeated so many times that it is becoming part of the lexicon despite the fact that it essentially means "Christian advantage." Whether you are Christian or not, shouldn't the truth reign in a democratic society? I hope the religious understand that it should.
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@Anthony
They want the truth to reign, all right--their "truth".
Because as we have all learned, there are "alternative facts".
2
In religion, problems arise when evangelism is a driving force: Christians believe they are compelled to convert the rest of us, by any and all means permitted by the times. This is considered "a right." Perhaps religion is just another battlefield in the libertarian war on communities and society. All through modern history, the libertarian argument is that joint actions that limit the rights of an individual are the work of mobs. Trade unions are "mobs." Even the government is a "mob." Hard to square that thinking with letting slip the dogs of Churches and of Citizens United.
25
This case involves more than the issue of separation of church and state. Vouchers, whether used to fund religious or secular private schools, divert tax money from public schools. In a society with citizens of all religious faiths and no religion, only public schools can offer a neutral ground to educate everybody.
If the voucher movement succeeds in eviscerating the public school system, every religious and a variety of secular groups will compete for tax dollars to fund their sectarian views, further undermining the sense of community which plays a vital role in preserving democracy. The notion that religious freedom entails a right to tap the public coffers to propagate one's religious doctrines would have astonished James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, but not George Orwell, who would have classified it as an example of "newspeak."
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@James Lee
Well said! Excellent and clear points in this debate.
1
'“The center cannot hold,” Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming.” He didn’t have the United States Supreme Court in mind when he wrote that line. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit.'
Indeed, and a slippery slope: could a Trump University revive with a voucher system waiting at the bottom?
22
And the war against America's greatest invention, public education for all, free, without the taint of religious indoctrination, continues. You cannot have a country dominated by a few insanely rich oligarchs without creating a populace brainwashed by religion.
For the record, I am an atheist. I recognize that there is no such thing as a supernatural God, I recognize that Jesus was a mythic character much in the mold of the ancient Gods who "lived" on Mt. Olympus. I grew up in a place, New England in the 1950's, where to admit that was to be shunned, and I have no doubt that as more and more money is devoted to destroying the public for the advance of the private (wealth), those days will return.
Hugh
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@Hugh Massengill I could agree more!
1
@Sam Marcus
I say "Freedom of religion is fine with me," so long as I get my "Freedom from religion!"
2
Thanks for the Sunday school lesson but atheists have always had a hard time in the Puritan utopia called America. Our most influential founder was Thomas Paine who influenced Thomas Jefferson and supported George Washington at Valley Forge. He was the atheist who risked everything to help America start the world over again. He was shunned in both England and America and deserted in his time of need by the country he had help come into being. He died without friends and only six people came to his funeral. But his spirit is the thing that we call “the Spirit of 76”, it is the ideology that animated the revolution and the constitution and it is the thing that modern Americans have forgotten.
We are simply going through a spiritual crisis that has been a recurring theme in American history. “These are the times that try men’s souls” and I am glad to live in them. I am glad I have the opportunity to raise my voice for the atheism of our greatest founder and the soul of the American Dream.
2
The state has a fundamental, compelling interest, in educating its population. If it does not take that interest seriously it will not endure. While I hold all religions equally suspect, they certainly have the right to extol their own slant on the people they control. But religions, at least for now, in this country, are not the state (interesting to speculate which one would win control).
Religious educational materials which slant the narrative of the topic to the viewpoint of the sect is not beneficial to the state (unless a theocracy). A secular state must, if it will survive, have control of the content and administration of education that does not include the bias of any religion.
The Supremes need to determine whether their oath to the Constitution ( the state) overrides their commitment to their religion. JFK did this, surely others can too.
63
We are all forced to pay attention to the Supreme Court. After all, it is . . . there . . . and it keeps making pronouncements on cases.
But at least the excellent Ms. Greenhouse gets paid for paying such attention.
Good for her, because it must be a very difficult job to cover an institution whose majority abandoned all pretense of political impartiality with Bush v. Gore and all pretense of economic impartiality with Citizens United. Rather like maintaining a perfectly straight journalistic face while reporting events on the other side of Alice's Looking-Glass.
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The Supreme Court has a long history of stupidity and political gamesmanship. The Dredd Scott decision in 1858 was a nice touch from an out of touch Court that thought they would substitute their will for that of the people. That decision guaranteed a civil war and a war was what was necessary to over turn their decision and write the new amendments that would contain their insanity in the future. But the courts blindness has continued with Bush v Gore, Citizens United, etc. These are all rulings that substitute the courts will for that if the people and force ever more drastic measures by the people to over come. The court is now willing to violate the clear black letter law of the constitution in its attempt to bring religion into a secular constitution where it does not belong. But the court can be changed and these decisions can be changed if the people will it. The court is obviously an anachronistic flawed idea that should be abandoned and the fact that the Republicans have packed the court with religious conservatives is s case in point. The court no longer has any function because it is just a device used by the Senate to rewrite the law in a subversive way. So how can this be improved in the future?
Understand that the court has always been political and not neutral and legislate an equal number of conservatives and liberals on it. Raise the number of justices to 10 so that split decisions have no power. Force the court to think outside of political boundaries.
If you like the idea of religious schools receiving public money, you would love Florida. We have greatly expanded the voucher program. It is a law that counties must share education money with religious schools, PRIVATE SCHOOLS. The rules are not the same though. Instruction is not the same. Testing is not the same. It allow corporations to donate to these schools and deduct these donations from their taxes. Fifth Third Bank was part of this funding until they found out that the schools they were donating to were allowed to be selective of the students they accepted. No LBGTQ students allowed for instance. Is this the kind of public education you advocate for?
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@Robert Black I’m betting other states have similar voucher programs too. It’s past time to tax religious groups/ schools and churches/synagogues and mosques. Not a chance of that happening though in our soon to be theocracy. With Trump about to be anointed “king”, with his acquittal from the crime everyone KNOWS he is guilty of, the future is grim. Vote like the words of the Constitution depend on it, because they do.
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@Robert Black is this true?...
3
@Jim Yes, it's true. And Wells Fargo just ended voucher funding for the same reason.
3
An entity that is tax-exempt should receive no additional help from taxpayers. Pretty simple.
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@KenF
This is a really good point. If religious institutions are entitled to share equally in the benefits of public funding, shouldn't they also be obligated to share equally in the burdens of paying the taxes that create that funding?
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@KenF Are you joking?
Tax exempt entities get taxpayer money all the time. Universities, hospitals, art museums, botanical gardens, nursing homes, historic sites etc etc. Are those all supposed to be cut off from taxpayer money?
21
@Ecce Homo
Religious organizations are non-profits, and I think the average church, temple, synagogue, or mosque has a stronger claim to being a bona fide non-profit than a lot of non-religious non-profits, like universities, hospitals, big art museums etc where the executives can make >$1 million a year. And what about high ticket cost art institutions are non-profits too. MoMA's ticket cost is $25, should they be a non-profit?
It is a double-standard to oppose the tax exemption for religious institutions and not other non-profits.
15
At the moment it is conservative christian religions that are determined to establish primacy in government. That makes sense because religion, especially conservative religion, views government as subordinate. All religions have a conservative faction - not just Baptists, Evangelicals, and Roman Catholics, but Sunnis, Shias, Orthodox Jews, and Hindus as well. Once conservative religion in general gets a foothold there must follow a struggle for dominance of a specific religion. Such a trajectory cannot end well.
191
We can already see the end of the beginning and it is anything but well. But religion has taken over government because it has taken over the dominate political party. And that political party is dominate because the opposing party is weak. It is the political weakness of the fragmented and centrist Democratic Party that has created the vacuum which the religious right has filled. If the Democratic Party would stop fighting pointless political identity battles and go back to its secular job oriented New Deal roots it could again become the dominant political party and move the country back toward the separation of church and state that is required for fair government. Theocracy can only take hold in an environment of fear and desperation. It is the job of the Democrats to rise above the fray and present an image of stability and security, to build a wall between the American people and fear. If they do that they can save the constitutional order. If they shrink from the challenge we will become the next Iran with a Supreme Court of Ayatollahs telling us what God wants us to do and running an inquisition for those who disobey. The clock is ticking.
2
@syfredrick
Christians were COMMANDED not to conflate religion and politics and the command came from a person they view as part of the deity.
There are multiple very good reasons for this:
1) It allows all of us of different religions to live together peacefully.
2) Religious ethics cannot make the compromises that civics must make. (see prohibition)
3) God of the gospel & especially the Prodigal Son, gave us enough free will to reject him. Like the Prodigal Son, we reject him. At that point we are hell bound or so Christianity says. But God doesn't want that. So he provides a way for us to find our way back to him - that allows us to keep our free will. That's the Passion. So exercising our free will, in pursuit of the truth, is critical to each of us finding our way back. Much of the Gospels are about how to seek truth, what truth looks like, what to avoid, and so on. The hope is like the Prodigal Son, we find our way back. There's no putting a gun to the head and telling a person to believe, there is, instead encouragement to seek the truth, and it will set you free.
Secular government makes it much more likely that we will be free to exercise our free will and freely seek out truth, and like the Prodigal Son, make our way back. That's the dynamic the Christian God wants.
This business of conflating church and state is, from a christian point of view, seemingly satanic. Religion coopted by something evil. This can't end good.
Not to generalize it overly, but I was struck most by the column’s touching a human element (hugely problematic to me) with political and social over wrappings. That human element is psychologically self serving for a distortion of equality to wrongly justify. Greenhouse notes as no one should get it, if I cannot get it. My adaptation of the citation may seem to trivialize or generalize the Montana case discussed in the column. But, I see there is a possibly dangerous progressivism at the core. The concept would be: You can also get it, only if I can get it, otherwise, no one should get it. Competitions over public funds to be drawn to me too as if a new MeToo movement is another possible element. Many justifications, polarized and wrought, can follow in all cases.
2
This situation is the effect of liberal voters not voting. And they will do it again in November. And they will whine and demonstrate in December. It seemed all the progressives do is whine. No purity no vote. A real winning position.
10
@Robert Black Is that why the Democrats swept the last election? Or maybe winning the popular vote for president?
5
For the last 30 years the right wing donors that now control the agenda of the GOP have been successfully recruiting religious zealots to their side with the strategy of throwing them bones via court appointments of judges inclined to outlaw abortion and defy the separation of church and state in education.
Education is important to the fundamentalists if they have their children enrolled in religious schools, but what they really want is for public schools to enforce their religious beliefs- vouchers will not pacify them, and for the political operatives this is a good thing. There's lots of bones left lure these mostly rural voters to support their candidates.
Should the Supreme Court ever strike down Roe, it might become hard to get these people to keep voting against their economic interests.
Given the greater influence of rural voters in this country, about the only thing the rest of us can do to balance the playing field is to at least boycott the sponsors of FOX news and use our power of the purse in every way possible to strike back at the right wing plutocrats that are pulling the strings here.
67
No, that’s not the only thing we can do, Roberts et al should know that there are graver consequences to their rulings. No more separation of religion and state, granting business more rights than citizens, formally installing Trump as monarch - refuting the basic semblance of American values - boycotts won’t be the end all of this battle. They are declaring war on America. And the Second Revolutionary War will be nastier than the first.
17
This program was designed for the purpose it achieved: to distribute privately donated funds to religious schools. This case involves an objection to the fact that that program was shut down because it was an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
I often agreed with Justice Kennedy on the misclassification of neutral action as acts of establishment, but there is no doubt at all here. In fact, this contrived program to make the state deliver private donations was 100% dedicated to that political purpose, and it creates an impermissible entanglement of the state with religion.
34
Like the Trinity Lutheran decision before it (which overrode the existing case law of Locke v. Davey, without literally any constitutional backing), this is clearly a case of the conservative wing of the supreme court going against their own origination interpretations of the constitution to fabricate a new expanded right of religious institutions to have access to American taxpayer's money.
60
Congress and the courts are working towards an establishment of religion.
For example, tax dollars are withheld from clinics here and abroad that provide abortions, or even discuss them objectively with patients, when most if not all objections to abortion are based on religious views.
When tax dollars are involved, preventing a physician from exercising first-amendment rights to talk about abortion is OK, and funding religious indoctrination despite first amendment prohibitions against an establishment of religion is also OK.
If the establishment clause is only about the government treating all religions equally, I hope Muslims try to fund private schools using the Quran as a textbook with tax-payer funded vouchers.
341
Absolutely! Just point out that Muslim schools would be entitled to taxpayers' dollars and see how the claim of religious liberty is applied by its fanatical supporters in this case!
35
@DL And Satanists should have equal treatment.
11
@DL Orthodox yeshivas are already of concern due to the extremely poor education that occurs at some.
1
"Religious freedom." A new mantra to go along with "job creators," "entitlements," and "death tax," to name a few. A major move towards theocracy and the ending of public education as we know it. Charter schools were only the intermediate step. The most activist Court in history is, once again, going to ignore precedent and reasoned Constitutional analysis in order to push their right wing agenda. Forget Roberts, the Chief Justice who is supposedly so concerned about the public's perception of the federal judiciary. Many of us have gotten it right for years- the Supreme Court majority is nothing more than an extension of the Republican Party (corrupt and cultish as it is) and its benefactors.
534
@Stew
Exactly correct. The right-wing is accomplishing two goals: throw a bone to the angry know-nothing "base" while allowing public money to be diverted to their patrons' private hands via "school choice."
The idea of the impartial SC, interpreting our majestic Constitution and settling good-faith disputes with only their sharpest legal acumen is a child's fairy tale.
73
@Stew
In matters concerning religion, it is rather obtuse to refer to such issues as political party matters.
The fact is that the majority of members of the supreme court belong to one religion. They are inclined to follow their religion and not the constitution, or settled law, in deciding the cases before them.
What would the founding fathers have thought about a supreme court dominated by a religion that was anathema at the time this country was founded?
43
@Stew You don't need God on your side when you have the Supreme Court working for you. They will win more of these cases as time goes by. Sad state for America to be sure.
27
Permitting religious schools to take money from public vouchers and charter school initiatives will be another reason to oppose both for me.
35
I am not sure the conservatives realize the potential repercussions of their argument that the state not giving them money means that "their free exercise is being penalized." This sounds like an argument more similar to that in European countries, where the state supports all religious institutions out of the public till in order to protect their free exercise. This has led to resentment of religious institutions and their role in society.
As a former public school teacher who dealt with children from voucher schools coming into high school with undiagnosed learning disabilities, wacky understandings of science and an inability to sit in mixed-gender classrooms, I certainly resent the role of religious voucher schools in society. Some of my students were unlikely to ever graduate high school because it would take so long for them to be properly diagnosed and accommodated after years of neglect. Depending on the outcome of this case, soon people in all fifty states might begin to feel a similar resentment to mine.
441
@Thomas Watson I think the "conservatives" want to establish a theocracy - Christian of course - and realize full well what they are about.
35
@Thomas Watson
Ahh yes...the industrialized world begins to move on and the US steps back in time. Religious freedom is really religious privilege.
I agree that these vouchers won't mean diddly when the kids are not smart enough to compete in future economies, but that will be some "liberal elite's" fault, not one of the person in the mirror.
If approved, watch the christian screaming that will occur when their taxes have to fund Islamic Madrasas down the street from their religious-privilege school.
If catholics want tax-payer funds, then tax the church to fund their equal treatment under the law. Enough with religious privileges.
74
I have felt the resentment you talk about for 50 years and I have seen this issue become more confused and more anti constitutional as the years wear on. From the moment they added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance (making it a prayer instead of a secular pledge) I have refused to say it. But I am a minority that is becoming smaller as time goes on. The idea of a secular government has been lost in the insanity of our Fake News age. But the wisdom and warning of the founders is still as valid now as it was then. We are violating their constitution everyday and we are imperiling the freedom that our government was designed to protect. We have become insane as a culture and we know nothing about who we really are. And until we all regain our senses we are all in danger.
9
Given that we accept the payment of taxes to support
the education of children who are not our own, and expect
even those who have never had children to pay such taxes,
it seems he best solution is to let the tax money follow the
child as long as the child is attending a school that meets
the educational standards of the State in question.
There are those who will say they do not want their tax dollars
going to pay for Religious Indoctrination.
Why should anyone's tax dollars go to pay for any sort of
Indoctrination, you might ask.
When I was in school I was told two things that were not
true and never had been true:
That our elected Politicians had our best interests at heart
and that there is Justice for all.
The ongoing farrago in the Senate proves the first one false.
The imprisoning of those who are actually innocent but
could not afford a private defense lawyer and so had to settle
for an overworked Public Defender, proves the second one
is a terrible lie.
If Religious indoctrination bothers you that much, then just fund the Religious School for the fraction of the day
that the students are taught non-religious subjects.
If those who are so adamant about Separation of Church and
State had not forced "Progressive Education" on our Public
Schools to where very little learning goes on in many of them,
we would not have this problem.
11
@John Brown
Myth supported by a distortion of the facts. If keeping public money from religious schools is not as simple as separation of church and state, then there is no truth.
I have worked in parochial schools, both good and bad. It depends on the makeup of the neighborhood and staff. I give to some private/religious schools of my time and effort. That is my choice. I want no government entity using my tax dollars to subjugate the purpose of public education to the narrow teachings of any sect, religious or otherwise. It's called separation of church and state. The most upstanding church organizations don't want public funds.
113
@slowaneasy They didn't pay any in !
4
@slowaneasy
What Myth.
Say students spend 5 hours learning what every
students learns in Public Schools and then one hour on religious activities. They get 5/6ths of the
funding the State pays for a Public School student
where is the problem ?
1