Liberals are throwing a tantrum after the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Maine’s tuition assistance program must cover religious schools.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down a Maine program that gave tuition aid for students to attend private schools but excluded schools offering religious instruction, arguing that it violated the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment.
“Maine has enacted a program of tuition assistance for parents who live in school districts that do not operate a secondary school of their own. Under the program, parents designate the secondary school they would like their child to attend—public or private—and the school district transmits payments to that school to help defray the costs of tuition. Most private schools are eligible to receive the payments, so long as they are ‘nonsectarian,’” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.
“The question presented is whether this restriction violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” he added.
The ruling is being celebrated as a win for school choice advocates, but as per usual, liberals are having a meltdown over the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Where #SCOTUS is heading: All parents get vouchers and they can send their kids to public or parochial schools. ‘Separation of church and state’ is a vanishing concept at the Supreme Court,” tweeted CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
“This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Left-wing media such as the National Public Radio also joined the anti-choice narrative to paint school choice advocates in a bad light while omitting facts stated in the opinion.
“NPR never fails to take the most hostile framing. The actual case says Maine’s tuition assistance program can’t discriminate against parents who want to send their kids to sectarian schools,” noted one Twitter user of NPR’s biased reporting of the ruling.
The majority opinion stated that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects individuals from “indirect coercion or penalties on the free exercise of religion, not just outright prohibitions.”
“A State’s [anti-establishment] interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise,” read the opinion.
