US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday wrote in a dissent to a ruling by the nine-member court that the state of Maine cannot deny public funds to religious schools, arguing that the wall separating “church and state” is one of the US’ foundational principles.
“There is nothing neutral about Maine’s program,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an opinion joined by five other justices.
“The state pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious,” Roberts wrote. “That is discrimination against religion.”
Photo: Reuters
In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote: “What a difference five years makes.”
“In 2017, I feared that the court was ‘leading us ... to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment,’” she wrote. “Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.”
“With growing concern for where this Court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent,” she wrote.
Zachary Heiden, chief counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, said that the ruling upended two decades of jurisprudence.
“For over 20 years, every court that has heard a challenge to Maine’s law that prohibits public funding of religious education has upheld its constitutionality, but this Supreme Court has rendered a decision completely contrary to the founding principle of separation of church and state,” Heiden said.
Lia Epperson, a law professor at American University who joined an amicus brief in the case in support of Maine, said that the ruling was significant.
“This is the first time the court has explicitly required taxpayers to support something that is a specific religious activity — that is religious instruction,” Epperson said.
Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said that the decision was the latest by the Roberts court “on a long trajectory of expanding the roles of religion in public life.”
“The court has not changed the underlying law,” Schwinn said. “It hasn’t gone so far as to overrule prior cases and yet it nevertheless has moved inexorably in the direction of not only inviting religion more into public life, but really mandating religion more into public life.”
“It’s done that incrementally,” he said. “You can agree or disagree with the direction the court is taking, it seems to me, but that the court is taking a direction is undeniable.”
“If there was any question before there’s quite clearly a majority in favor of religion now,” Schwinn said.
Epperson agreed.
“We do have an increasingly religious and conservative court,” she said. “You will see that reflected in the decisions.”
“This is the most Catholic the Supreme Court has ever been in its history in terms of the justices,” she said.
Six of the nine justices are Catholic — Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer are Jewish, while Justice Neil Gorsuch is Episcopalian.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is to replace the retiring Breyer next term, is Protestant.
According to a Gallup survey, 22 percent of the US’ adult population identifies as Catholic and 45 percent as non-Catholic Christians.
Two percent identify as Jewish and 21 percent say they have no formal religious identity.
Kevin Welner, a professor specializing in educational policy and law at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that the Maine ruling could have some potential pitfalls.
“The example here is: Do we really want our government deciding which asserted religious beliefs are geniune?” he said.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
RSS