PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s highest court has turned away an attempt to force a state voucher program to include religious schools.
In a 6–1 ruling, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court said April 26 a state law that bans a publicly funded voucher program from including “sectarian” schools does not violate the U.S. Constitution.
The statute “neither improperly infringes on the free exercise of religion, nor violates the [First Amendment’s] Establishment Clause,” said Justice Donald Alexander, who wrote the court’s opinion.
Maine has a long-standing program allowing rural school districts lacking high schools to send students to neighboring school districts or, alternatively, to pay for their tuition at private schools.
In 1981, state legislators amended the program to bar state funds from going to religious schools. At the time, they cited previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions suggesting such vouchers violated the First Amendment. Several years later, a group of parents in those school districts sued the state, claiming the law discriminates against parents who want to send their children to parochial schools. While they lost that case, they refiled it after the federal high court’s 2002 Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision. It said an Ohio voucher program that included religious schools was constitutional. But in the Maine court’s most recent ruling, the majority cited a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decision, 2004’s Locke v. Davey. It said while states may provide tuition grants to religious schools, the Constitution does not compel them to as long as the state has a rational reason for excluding religious schools.
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