The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carson v. Makin (2022) that a law in Maine barring government funding for students to attend schools that provide religious instruction was unconstitutional.
Despite this precedent, governments are still discriminating against Christians. The old “religious entanglement” tests are gone. Religious families are eligible to receive funding available to the public.
The state of Vermont disagrees. State and local officials say that religious schools and families with children enrolled in them are barred from a public benefit others receive. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represents a religious family that filed a federal lawsuit. An excerpt:
The Bishop family, represented by ADF attorneys, lives in the Barstow Unified Union School District, which doesn’t have a high school, so they chose to send their daughter to a Catholic school, Mount St. Joseph Academy. Government officials, however, denied the family’s request for Town Tuition funding because Act 73 eliminates all religious schools from the Town Tuition Program. Plus, the Barstow Unified School District refused to grandfather the Bishops’ daughter into the tuition program even though she met the requirements of the law.
Before Carson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that Vermont’s exclusion violated the First Amendment. Lawmakers passed a law that continued the exclusion — seemingly ignoring the Supreme Court’s decision.
ADF noted the case’s similarities to Carson. Families in Maine with no access to a local government school could participate in a tuition assistance program to choose alternative private schools. But the money couldn’t be used for religious teaching. The state had to make a correction.
The same applies to Vermont. The discriminatory laws cannot stand.
“Vermont’s message is clear: Religious schools and their families are treated as second-class in this state,” said Jake Reed, ADF legal counsel. “No religious school qualifies for Town Tuition funding, and no family who wants to send their kids to a religious school can reap the benefits of their own tax dollars. The First Amendment does not tolerate such treatment.”
