Supreme Court: Parents Are Free to Choose the Best Education for Their
Children


There hasn't been much good news from the Supreme Court lately,
but today we're happy to share a good opinion from our
nation's high Court. Today, five of the Court's nine
justices decided that parents should be free to choose the best
education for their children-and that includes education in
private, faith-based schools.

The Court's decision today is a win for parents, for religious
freedom, and most importantly-for children. We believe that
children win when their parents can choose the best education for each
child, and that no government should place limitations on a
child's future because of her zip code or her family's
income.

And, today's decision is a beautiful story of how families and
godly values advance when we-the family of
believers-unleash our citizenship to see government work for the
people.

Please let me share that story with you. I believe it's an
important one for every believer who cares about this country to know.

In 2015, good legislators in the state of Montana passed into law a
tax-credit scholarship program designed to help low-income families,
especially single mothers, send their children to the best schools for
them-including private faith-based schools. The law was written
by our friends at Montana Family Foundation.

Then things started to go wrong. The Montana Department of Revenue
issued a rule saying that children receiving the scholarships could
not use them at faith-based schools. So, three mothers who believed
their children would be better off at faith-based schools filed a
lawsuit. Sadly, the Montana Supreme Court issued an opinion in 2018,
stating that it believed Montana's Constitution allows the state
government to discriminate against faith-based schools based on a
provision historically used to prohibit government funds from going to
faith-based schools (also known as a "Blaine Amendment"),
and it struck down Montana's good scholarship program.

What's worse is that many states have "Blaine
Amendments" in their Constitutions, and these Amendments were
discriminatory in nature from their very beginning. They started out
in the 1870's as a way to keep Catholic influence out of the
largely Protestant public schools during a time of high anti-Catholic
and anti-immigrant bias in America. Obviously, the Blaine Amendments
are old dinosaurs in the law based on interdenominational conflicts
that need to go extinct.

As the conflict over Montana's scholarship program reached the
Supreme Court, the Montana Family Foundation, which represents family
values in the state, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case
defending the law on behalf of Montana's families.

Family Policy Alliance and the state family policy councils also
worked to gather state lawmakers to file another friend-of-the-court
brief in the case to show the Supreme Court that good lawmakers in
other states also want to advance options for education choice for
families. In fact, many lawmakers who are alumni of Family Policy
Foundation's Statesmen Academy signed onto this brief!
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And now today, the Supreme Court declared that families in Montana
should be free to choose the education that best suits their
children-including in faith-based schools, that the old Blaine
Amendment used to invalidate the scholarship program is bigoted and
discriminatory, and that faith-based schools can't be
disqualified from a school choice program just because they are
faith-based.

President Trump, who supports school choice for children as a civil
rights issue, also issued a statement today in support of the
Court's decision, saying "no parent should be forced to
send their child to a failing school."

Today's decision is a celebration of how children are the real
winners when believers work to elect state lawmakers who support their
values, those state lawmakers pass good laws, citizens and lawmakers
join together to defend those good laws, the nation's high Court
applies our constitutional religious freedom protections correctly,
and our President supports the values we hold dear.

This is a win for biblical citizenship in action, for your faithful
partnership in supporting the mission of Family Policy Alliance to
advance your values in both public policy and elections,
and-most importantly-for children who deserve the best
foundation we can give them as they seek out God's calling on
their lives.
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For our children,


Autumn Leva
Vice President of Strategy

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(866) 655-4545
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