Religion decision paves the way for Dougco vouchers

In a ruling that started with a question about shredded tires in Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ripped up bigoted, state-level arguments for withholding taxpayer support from religious schools. Here in Colorado, the decision counts as a big win for the Douglas County school board’s effort to offer its parents vouchers to send their children to private religious schools.

The high court argued that Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources was wrong to prevent Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia from taking part in a program that uses shredded tires in playgrounds to protect against scrapes and bruises. The church operates a preschool and hoped to replace decidedly less-cushioning pea gravel. Its application for the program ranked near the top of a list of competitors, meaning it would have won on the merits, but officials reading their state’s constitution, and its inclusion of socalled Blaine Amendment language, disqualified the church.

Thankfully, the argument collapsed before the high court. As Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority — which includes newcomer Neil Gorsuch — argued, “The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution … and cannot stand.”

Trinity Lutheran argued the disqualification violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection and its First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. In agreeing with the church, the high court made it clear that language in Missouri’s constitution is the kind of unconstitutional bigotry we’ve long railed against in Blaine Amendment provisions in 36 states, including Colorado.

The language, a holdover from the 19th century, was meant to isolate Catholic schools during a time of heightened Protestant prejudice. Colorado’s version bars any funding that helps “support or sustain” any school “controlled by any church or sectarian denomination,” a high bar indeed. This despite the fact that when lawmakers inserted the Blaine language in 1876, it was common for other religious-based instruction to receive support in public schools.

Douglas County school board members have twice tried to provide families vouchers that pass taxpayer money that would have gone to support their classrooms to parents to help cover private school tuition. State courts, relying in part in our own Blaine Amendment language, have so far blocked the program, reasonably assuming that the vouchers would likely end up being used at private schools operated by religious organizations. Presently, Dougco’s school board has a case pending before the high court making similar arguments about Blaine Amendment wrongheadedness.

We hope the Supreme Court’s ruling starts the beginning of a process that strips such language from state constitutions and signals a willingness by the justices to approve Dougco’s voucher program.

Aside from its bigoted roots, the Blaine worry also is unevenly applied. Already in Colorado, preschools of religious nature benefit from taxpayer support, as they do in Denver’s public support for preschool parents.

Why K-12 should operate under different rules likely has less to do with concerns about the separation of church and state and more to do with well-funded teachers union lobbyists protecting their classroom dominance.