Case before Supreme Court threatens separation of church, state

In America, you can’t be forced to fund schools that teach creationism instead of science, theocracy instead of democracy and discrimination instead of acceptance of difference. Can you?

That’s the question before the Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin — a case with major implications for the historic principle of church-state separation.

In Carson, two sets of parents in Maine claim that the Constitution’s promise of religious freedom actually requires the state to fund religious education at private schools with taxpayer dollars — as a substitute for public education. This interpretation flips the meaning of religious freedom on its head and threatens both true religious freedom and public education.

The case arose because some areas of the state are too rural to maintain traditional public schools. To meet its obligation under the state constitution to provide a public education to all students in the state, Maine offers public education through neighboring public schools or nearby secular private schools in these rural areas. But the two couples, represented by the Institute for Justice, argue that this program must fund religious education as well.

And not just any religious education. The problem here is even bigger than public funds paying for praying, as wrong as that is. Unlike public schools, private religious schools often do not honor civil rights protections, especially for LGBTQ people, women, students with disabilities, religious minorities and the nonreligious.

Both of the private religious schools at issue in Carson discriminate in admissions and employment against non-Christians and LGBTQ people.

Temple Academy bars admission to LGBTQ students and students with LGBTQ parents. Its hiring guidelines state that LGBTQ employees will be fired, explaining that “God recognize(s) homosexuals and other deviants as perverted.” At Bangor Christian School, students who come out as LGBTQ are required to undergo “counseling” and must

renounce their sexual orientation or gender identity or face expulsion.

One of the listed objectives in a ninth grade social studies class at Bangor Christian is to “refute the teachings of the Islamic religion with the truth of God’s word.” If the petitioners get their way, Muslim taxpayers in Maine are going to have to fund that teaching.

The case arrives as recent rulings have chipped away at church-state separation. Most recently, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Supreme Court held that the state of Montana could not exclude schools from its private school voucher program solely because of their status as religious schools. But that stopped far short of saying the state was obligated to pay for religious instruction.

This is where the court — even a court that has been suspicious of anything that smacks of discrimination against religion — must draw the line. If not, it will violate one of the main principles that led our country’s founders to enshrine church-state separation in the Constitution in the first place: to ensure taxpayers are not forced to pay for the private religious education of others.

If the court were to agree with the parents, it would also be rejecting the will of three-quarters of the states, which long ago enacted clauses in their state constitutions and passed statutes prohibiting public funding of religious education.

A key virtue of public schools is that they are open to all students, regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation, gender identity or ability. Students should never be discriminated against or subjected to a religious test to access what is rightfully theirs.

J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press The Supreme Court is hearing a case that would require states to fund religious education at private schools.