Carson v. Makin: The Supreme Court will gut the separation of church and state. //SLATE

In the 1950's the principle of separation of church and state was transformed by the Supreme Court.  It was the subject of much resistance.  The country was gripped by fear of the Communist Soviet Union.  We sent children diving under desks in air raid drills, as we were taught that Russian missiles would give us only 15 minutes warning.  Some dug backyard bomb shelters and the Civil Defense stashed biscuits and water in school basements. Since Communism is "godless" the pledge of allegiance was amended, awkwardly adding "One nation, under God!, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Thanks to Supreme Court's 1952  Zorach v. Clauson   approval of `released time'  we Catholics left class early, our two Jewish classmates and one Lutheran sitting in an otherwise empty classroom, and dutifully walked the few blocks to St. Bernard's church.   There young nuns of St. Joseph, in full habit, taught us why God made us.  We recited "to know, love and serve him in this world and be happy with Him forever in the next".

Such accommodation was deemed acceptable.  Later when I went to a Jesuit high school in Brooklyn I got state aid to buy my monthly  LIRR ticket.  But other than that there was no state aid to parochial education.

That seems all poised to change.  "Discrimination" between religious and non-religious public schools seems to be invidious in the minds of most of the Justices today.  Religion is to be neither favored nor disfavored.  The anti-establishmentarian principle of the Firs Amendment seems to play no part now in the thinking of the Scotus majority. 

But neutrality toward religion seems so old fashioned.  this week the Court's conservatives at oral argument seemed ready to go the next step - and mandate that a state provide the same assistance to religious schools as they do to state universities.

- GWC.

Carson v. Makin: The Supreme Court will gut the separation of church and state. //SLATE

By Mark Joseph Stern

The Supreme Court appears poised to reject a fundamental principle of constitutional law: the proposition that states have a compelling interest in keeping religion out of public schools. Six Republican-appointed justices indicated on Wednesday that preserving a secular public education system constitutes “religious discrimination” in violation of the First Amendment. In the short run, this conclusion will force taxpayers in several states to fund openly discriminatory fundamentalist Christian schools. In the long run, it imperils public education as we know it.

Wednesday’s case, Carson v. Makin, No. 20-1088 involves a Maine program that provides a subsidy to students who don’t live near a regular public school. These students can spend the money on any private school that provides a “rough equivalent” of a public education. Eligible schools can be affiliated with a religion, though they can’t infuse their curriculum with religious doctrine. If a school compels students to engage in religious exercise—and discriminates against those who don’t adhere to the faith—it doesn’t qualify for the program under state law. A Christian family in Maine filed a lawsuit alleging that this restriction violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, handing the Supreme Court another opportunity to obliterate the separation of church and state.

During oral arguments, Maine chief deputy Attorney General Christopher Taub raised several justifications for the state’s refusal to underwrite religious education. Most of them began from the presumption that the government has a compelling reason to build a wall between religion and state-sponsored education. Taub had good reason for this presumption: It’s called the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In a long line of cases, the Supreme Court has prohibited states from using their “public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines and ideals.” The court has routinely explained that this bar does not “manifest a governmental hostility to religion or religious teachings,” but simply enforces the First Amendment’s guarantee against any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” Moreover, the court has held that states may erect a wall between church and state that goes higher than the Establishment Clause requires, acknowledging “antiestablishment interests” in preventing entanglement of religion and government.

For most of the 20th century, the Supreme Court mandated religious neutrality in public education. Now a majority of justices think this neutrality is “odious” discrimination. How did it come to this? Justice Amy Coney Barrett provided a clue when she told Taub that “all schools” have “some belief system”; even public schools must decide “the kind of values they want to inculcate in the students.” To Barrett and her conservative colleagues, religion is just one of many competing “values” that schools might teach. Taub identified some of these values—“public service, be kind to others, be generous”—as the foundation for a civic-minded education in a pluralistic democracy. The conservative justices were more skeptical: They think that, by selecting these (secular) values as the bedrock of public education, Maine disfavors institutions that would rather  instill overtly religious values.

 KEEP READING