Justices suggest religious schools OK to get Maine tuition aid

WASHINGTON » The Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to rule that religious schools can’t be excluded from a Maine program that offers tuition aid for private education.

The court’s six conservative justices seemed largely unpersuaded, after nearly two hours in the courtroom, by Maine’s arguments that the state is willing to pay for the rough equivalent of a public education, but not religious inculcation.

The court’s three liberal justices signaled they were more aligned with the state’s arguments.

The case is the latest test of religious freedoms for a

Supreme Court that has favored faith-based discrimination claims.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh used an example of neighbors, one choosing a secular private school and the other opting for a religious school for their children. The first family gets the state aid, but not the second.

“That’s just discrimination on the basis of religion at the neighborhood level,” Kavanaugh said.

The parents argue that their exclusion from the state program violates their religious rights under the Constitution. Teachers unions and school boards say a ruling for the parents would be a blow to public education.

In largely rural Maine, the state allows families who live in towns that don’t have public schools to receive public tuition dollars to send their children to the public or private school of their choosing. The program excludes religious schools.

Most of the justices attended religious schools and several send or have sent their children to them. No one spoke of those experiences in court Wednesday.

To qualify for the Maine program, schools don’t even have to be in the state, or the United States, said Michael Bindas, a lawyer with the libertarian public-interest law firm Institute for Justice who argued on behalf of the parents.