The spotlight was recently on abortion rights, as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health on Dec. 1. As I and other observers have noted, conservative justices seem ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and thereby significantly restrict reproductive freedom. It seems indisputable that their eagerness to erode abortion rights is at least partially rooted in religious belief.
Out of the spotlight entirely were arguments in another case, Carson v. Makin, argued on Dec. 8, which may have even more dire ramifications for the already fragile “wall” separating church from state.
At issue is a statue in Maine that prohibits tuition dollars from flowing to religious schools. Like Vermont and New Hampshire, Maine has a tuitioning program to accommodate families in communities with insufficient population to operate a public high school. In Upper Valley communities like Sharon or Strafford, students use tax dollars to attend private schools like Sharon Academy or Thetford Academy. The Maine statue specifically states that private schools receiving public funds must be “approved” and “nonsectarian.”
The Maine families challenging the Maine statute are supported by a range of shadowy organizations, most notably the ironically named Institute for Justice. This and similar advocacy groups scour the environment for aggrieved clients to challenge laws they seek to overturn. This is true in the many challenges to abortion rights, affirmative action and other cases dealing with separation clause issues.
In several recent Supreme Court decisions, Espinoza v. Montana and Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, regarding public support for religious schools, the court has narrowly sided with the religious schools that claimed they were discriminated against. In both of these cases, the court ruled that laws barring public support for religious schools violate the free exercise clause. The Institute for Justice was behind these cases too.
The potentially dire ramifications of Carson v. Makin are due to a dramatic extension of the somewhat limited scope of the prior rulings. In Espinoza v. Montana and Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, the court ruled that a school cannot be denied funding otherwise available to public schools just because of the school’s religious character or identity. The Carson v. Makin decision would go much further and permit public funding of explicit religious teaching.
Among the schools these Maine families wish to attend on the public dime is a school that, according to the state’s brief, requires teachers to sign a contract stating, “The Bible says that God recognize(s) homosexuals and other deviants as perverted” and that “deviation from Scriptural standards is grounds for termination.”
It seems that the Supreme Court is poised to support the argument that this school may not be discriminated against.
Precisely who is discriminating against whom? I suppose a school is free to espouse such hateful and primitive policies, but this blatant, hostility is not something a taxpayer should support.
Taken together, these cases about abortion and support of religious education are part and parcel of the Republican effort to replace our secular democracy with a kinder and gentler version of the fundamentalist theocracies in places like Afghanistan and Iran. That ours is Christian is a distinction without much of a difference.
Perhaps you think I’m being alarmist, but the signs are ominous. If the court rules as expected, the floodgates will be open and every state with a tuitioning program or a voucher scheme will send tax dollars to religious schools of all kinds. The transfer of limited resources to private schools will be catastrophic to already cash-strapped public schools.
Republicans control legislatures in 60% of our not-so-United States. As has been clear, they are seeking to maintain or expand minority rule through gerrymandering and voter suppression. The conservative movement has long expressed animus toward public education, falsely claiming that schools are teaching “critical race theory” and indoctrinating students into a socialist, godless world view.
Secular public education is one of the few American institutions that can hold our increasingly fragmented society together. The functions of a representative democracy are dependent on citizens who are prepared with a common foundation of knowledge and understanding. Now, well-orchestrated campaigns are underway to ban books, give radical religious parents control over curricula and to assault teachers and local school boards over reasonable health measures like mask and vaccine requirements.
The impact of the likely ruling in Carson v. Makin will reverberate through our society, further weakening the guardrails that our founders erected to protect us from drifting back toward the English theocracy we escaped.
We’re not paying adequate attention.
Steve Nelson is a Valley News columnist. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.