Sixteen years later, drinks are on Lee Schoenbeck!
A day after the Supreme Court set Team Trump and Governor Kristi Noem to griping about unelected justices resisting their work to establish theocracy, Chief Justice John Roberts switched from batting lefty to batting righty and handed the theocrats a big win, overturning the Blaine Amendments in 38 states (this map shows 37) that prohibit the use of public funds to benefit religious schools.
Montana created a tax credit for private school scholarships in 2015, a measure very much like the insurance-tax stealth-voucher program South Dakota enacted in 2016. Since 70% of Montana’s private schools are religious, the Montana Supreme Court cried foul:
Ultimately, the Montana Supreme Court struck down the entire tax credit program for all private schools, religious and nonreligious alike. It said the tax credit conflicted with the state constitution, which bars all state aid for religious education, whether direct or indirect, including tax subsidies like this one [Nina Totenberg and Brian Naylor, “Supreme Court: Montana Can’t Exclude Religious Schools from Scholarship Program,” NPR, 2020.06.30].
Alas, the United States Supreme Court decided otherwise today:
“A state need not subsidize private education, but once it decides to do so it cannot disqualify some private schools because they are religious,” he wrote. Thus, the tax credit created by the state legislature to benefit students attending qualifying private schools, including religious schools, must stand as originally designed [Totenberg and Naylor, 2020.06.30].
As Justice Stephen Breyer noted in dissent, “for 250 years, we have drawn a line at forcing taxpayers to pay the salaries of those who teach their faith from the pulpit.” Today’s ruling in Espinoza v. Montana means Montana, South Dakota, and other states can now force taxpayers to pay the salaries of those who teach their faith in a classroom… the illness of which South Dakota’s theocrats won’t realize until the growing Muslim communities in our meat-packing communities build their own private schools and start applying for stealth vouchers to teach the Qu’ran. South Dakota’s theocrats won’t be able to discriminate against one growing religion to protect their shrinking religion; we can only hope they will have to wisdom to retreat to my preferred position—a position Roberts still leaves open to the states—that the state’s sole obligation to religion is to stay the heck out of it, while the state’s sole responsibility in providing education is to support public education.
Let Senator Schoenbeck reach for high Jesusical irony and reintroduce Lee Qualm’s 2019 plan to divert electric utility tax dollars directly to religious schools. Let’s the rest of us reach for a new President, new legislators, and eventually a new Governor who will all reach for bricks to reinforce the proper wall of separation between church and state.
Well, the good news is that our kids and grandkids will get to refight the separate but equal/integration issue that we had to address. As public funds go to religious/charter education, less will be available for those in the public system. It will wind down to another unbalanced situation that will have to be addressed AGAIN. We never learn! Guess it’s called the circle of life. :-(
Gotta tax all religious institutions then. Every single one of them.
There seems to be a central issue skirted: can a state just say no to public funds going to private education institutions – secular or non-secular – ALL privates? It is infuriating that these private/religious institutions are not held to the standards and practices of public schools — even when accepting public funding.
Current tax law allows charitable deductions; much of that charity is enjoyed by religious institutions (and by direct or indirect pathways religious education institutions). Isn’t that enough of a diversion of public resources?
It feels like we have lost the entire purpose of public taxation for education: it is NOT to educate “your” kids; it is to ensure your community has access to public education. This whole discussion seems to have moved toward the selfish interest over the community good. Religious schools are not for the public good; they are limited in focus to the specific constituency they serve and hostile (discriminatory) to elements of a general society. We are absolutely witnessing the wealthy exerting their influence so that ONLY their vision of what society ought to look like is financed.
Debbo – amen!
We start with the Lutheran Churches, Ms. Geelsdottir. We tax them hard, then move on to the insaner cults like Mr. Howie’s gathering of apostles. We tax them super hard, so they have to rely on free Lutheran pot-lucks to eat. Indeed, we tax the religious institutions and we send the goon squads in to crawl up their books.
To make sure grudznick is clear, here, those would be Lutheran pot-lucks with hot dishes, at which Mr. Howie and his minions would be forced to grovel at the feet of church ladies to eat. Hot dishes with gravy tater tots and other yummies. Even Mr. Howie and the heavily taxed Lutheran churches deserve some yummies.
If you know of such a pot luck going on in Rapid City this coming weekend, please blog it here. So Mr. Howie knows, I mean.
Very well put O:
“It feels like we have lost the entire purpose of public taxation for education: it is NOT to educate ‘your’ kids; it is to ensure your community has access to public education.”
The wealthy and the eagerly, but pathetically pandering GOP have been effectively destroying the concept of “promote the general welfare.”
BTW, I don’t remember what document that phrase comes from. Does it ring a bell for anyone?
I agree with Debbo. Tax all religious institutions. And in sadness I agree with “o”, and would add religious schools are just one of many examples of ideology and policy shifting in the selfish direction. We live in a world designed and controlled by the utmost rich.
Oh goody! Taxpayer funding for Taliban and Wiccan schools!! What could go wrong?!
Federal Pell Grants may be used at private religious institutions of higher learning. I know. I used them. Way back in the 1980’s. Just sayin’.
O, my impression from the ruling is that, yes, states can still preserve their singular commitment to public education and refuse to offer any subsidy to private schools (although Betsy DeVos is, naturally, forcing public schools to spend coronavirus aid on private schools). But in South Dakota, where every private school I can think of is a Jesus school, we can no longe rbase an argument against such (counterproductive) funding on an Establishment Clause argument.
Unless the constitution forbids it, states that are being forced to support private schools via tax $ can naturally begin taxing them through legislation.
I keep getting pulled back to Debbo’s taxation point: if some of my tax money goes to send kids to the Lutheran school, then why doesn’t some of the Lutheran’s collection get used to send kids to public school?
Also, I have no representation at the Lutheran school (I have no input on it’s board or trustees), but am taxed to support it?
Richard, The situation of Pell grants also troubles me for these same reasons. Tax dollars that COULD have reduced the cost to public institutions has been/is used to help finance private (especially religious ) institutions seem a version of the corporate welfare mentality that has somehow convinced the masses the the elite need to be supported.
Full disclosure, I am also of the mind that there should be NO charitable deductions for taxation. We the people (the government) bears the full responsibility for the propagation of the public good. The wealth of this great nation is being criminally misused.
In SPOTUS news, rumours are flying that either Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito or both will retire this year. Hope they have the decency to wait until Biden is sworn in with a Democratic Senate majority.