SCOTUS: Barring Christian Schools From Aid Program Violates Constitution

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% :First Liberty Institute and Institute for Justice celebrated the victory as a win for religious liberty and parents "all over the country."
57% : In a major win for religious liberty, the Supreme Court sided 6-3 on Tuesday against Maine's education program, which excludes tuition assistance for students attending religious schools.
53% : But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious."
47% : Breyer argued that the First Amendment "sometimes allows a state to further antiestablishment interests by withholding aid from religious institutions without violating the Constitution's protections for the free exercise of religion."
44% : ""Maine's 'nonsectarian' requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," Roberts wrote.
43% : Roberts held that barring parents from directing state funding to a religious school of their choice violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, defined as "indirect coercion or penalties on the free exercise of religion, not just outright prohibitions.
42% :Roberts rebutted Breyer's dissent, writing that while Breyer stresses the importance of "government neutrality" toward religion, "there is nothing neutral about Maine's program.""The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools -- so long as the schools are not religious.
38% : The case, Carson v. Makin, is centered around parents who wished to send their children to Christian schools using state aid, only to be banned from the assistance program because the schools teach through a "lens of faith."

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.