In 2015, the Montana Legislature created a scholarship program for students intended to provide parents with more choices on where their children would attend school. The program fostered this choice by providing individuals and businesses with a tax credit of up to $150 annually for donations made to private organizations that provide scholarships to students who wish to attend private schools. However, the state’s taxing agency ruled that students could not use scholarships at any school “owned or controlled in whole or in part by any church, religious sect, or denomination,” citing the state constitution’s Blaine Amendment as justification.
Kendra Espinoza, a single mother depending on the scholarship funds to offset private school tuition costs, exercised her right to choose the best school for her children by selecting a Christian school whose values she preferred, as opposed to keeping her daughters in public school where they had been bullied. When her ability to use scholarship funds for the Christian school was cut off, Espinoza sued asserting that the exclusion of religious school from the scholarship program discriminated against religion in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that states are not required to subsidize private education, “but once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
The Supreme Court's 5-4 opinion and The Rutherford Institute’s amicus brief in Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue are available at www.rutherford.org.
Source: https://bit.ly/2VAfI8u
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