The conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court just punched another giant hole in the wall of separation between church and state in the case of Carson v Makin, ruling 6-3 to overturn a perfectly sensible Maine law.
What the Carson v Makin case is all about
Students in Maine are guaranteed free public education until they graduate high school. But in some rural parts of the state, where there are no local schools, students have the option of attending a private school on the state’s dime (assuming they’re accepted into those schools). State law, however, mandates that those schools must be secular. Taxpayer money can’t be used to pay tuition at a religious school. Makes perfect sense.
But a few years ago, three sets of families represented by the (Libertarian) Institute for Justice and the (conservative) First Liberty Institute sued the state claiming it was illegal for Maine to deny funding to the Christian schools the students wanted to attend. Their schools met every condition laid out by the state for a tuition reimbursement… except for the religion part. (Amy and Dave Carson are two of the parents involved in the lawsuit, and Maine’s Commissioner of Education is Pender Makin, so the case was called Carson v Makin.)
SCOTUS has turned into just another Republican carnival act.