Maine

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Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info

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Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info

For a minute or two, I thought that the Washington Post was going to publish a fair-minded news feature about the complex issues involved in “school choice” legislation.

Alas, it soon became clear that this was another business-as-usual piece that was, for the most part, committed to featuring the voices of activists on one side of the story. The story also avoided a key church-state legal term that is shaping recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on this subject.

Thus, it’s time — once again — for readers to grab some highlighter pens. Hold that thought.

You can sense what’s going on in the headline: “More states are paying to send children to private and religious schools.”

Ah, but private schools are private schools, too. Some are secular, some are openly religious. Some of the religious schools are on the left, in terms of doctrine, and some are on the right. But they are all “private” schools. Are all private schools created equal? Did the Post team “get” this angle of the story and include some diversity in the sourcing?

The bottom line: What we have here is another one of those “highlighter pen” stories that GetReligion digs into every now and then. What readers need to do is print a copy of the story and then grab three pens with different colors — maybe red, blue and some variation on purple. The goal is to mark quotes representing voices on the cultural left, right and, maybe, even in the middle.

But first, here is how the story opens:

For years, school-choice advocates toted up small victories in their drive to give parents taxpayer money to pay for private school. Now, Republican-led states across the country are leaving the limitations of the past behind them as they consider sweeping new voucher laws that would let every family use public funds to pay for private school.


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Fringe Trump-style conservatives propose a HUGE legal rewrite on religion in public life

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Fringe Trump-style conservatives propose a HUGE legal rewrite on religion in public life

All but overshadowed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s dramatic elimination of nationalized abortion rights, the just-concluded term was vital in terms of how the Constitution applies to religion.

There were moments of unity. The Court’s liberals joined emphatic rulings that Boston must allow the Christian flag to be shown on the same terms as other displays, and that a death-row inmate is entitled to religious ministrations.

But then there were two highly contentious rulings, both in June. The high Court said a football coach is free to openly pray on the field after games and that a Maine program must include sectarian high schools if it pays tuition for other non-public campuses. That second decision explicitly erased key doctrine on what constitutes an “establishment of religion” that the Constitution forbids.

The current Court has become “exceedingly accommodating of people’s religious views,” and is “blowing a hole in the wall between church and state,” summarized the displeased New Yorker magazine.

Reporters should be watching one conservative faction’s hope for more radical renovation on the “establishment” clause. The Religion Guy learned about this, of all places, in a June 28 Rolling Stone item about the friend-of-the-court brief filed in the football prayer case, Kennedy v. Bremerton, by the group America First Legal. AFL became a player in the political litigation game only last year.

Where to begin? Repeat after me: “incorporation” and “disincorporation.”

No, not the formation and dissolution of a business, but an extremely important and often overlooked doctrine in Constitutional law. Simply put, the Supreme Court has extended the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment to cover all the states because — believe it not — the U.S. Constitution as written involved only the federal government.

The first incorporation decision was in the 1925 Gitlow case, when it required New York State to recognize freedom of speech, followed by the Near case (Minnesota, press freedom, 1931), De Jonge (Oregon, freedom of assembly, 1937) and Edwards (South Carolina, petitioning government, 1963).


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Another SCOTUS win for 'equal access,' whether most journalists realized this or not

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Another SCOTUS win for 'equal access,' whether most journalists realized this or not

For a decade or more, U.S. Supreme Court justices have been arguing about the separation of church and state. What we keep seeing is a clash between two different forms of “liberalism,” with that term defined into terms of political science instead of partisan politics.

Some justices defend a concept of church-state separation that leans toward the secularism of French Revolution liberalism. The goal is for zero tax dollars to end up in the checkbooks of citizens who teach or practice traditional forms of religious doctrine (while it’s acceptable to support believers whose approach to controversial issues — think sin and salvation — mirror those of modernity).

Then there are justices who back “equal access” concepts articulated by a broad, left-right coalition that existed in the Bill Clinton era. The big idea: Religious beliefs are not a uniquely dangerous form of speech and action and, thus, should be treated in a manner similar to secular beliefs and actions. If states choose to use tax dollars to support secular beliefs and practices, they should do the same for religious beliefs and practices.

At some point, it would be constructive of journalists spotted these “equal access” concepts and traced them to back to their roots in the Clinton era (and earlier). But maybe I am being overly optimistic.

You can see these tensions, kind of, in the Associated Press coverage of the new SCOTUS decision that addressed a Maine law that provided tax funds for parents who chose secular private schools, but not those who chose religious schools. The headline of the main report stated, “Supreme Court: Religious schools must get Maine tuition aid.”

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority in this 6-3 ruling. In this story, “liberal” is used to describe the majority.

“Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise,” Roberts wrote.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.


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Plug-In: Can a high school coach pray at 50-Yard line? Five SCOTUS hearing takeaways

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Plug-In: Can a high school coach pray at 50-Yard line? Five SCOTUS hearing takeaways

The case of Joseph Kennedy, a Bremerton, Washington, high school football coach who wants to kneel and pray at the 50-yard line, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

Arguments took nearly two hours, double the time scheduled. Here are five key takeaways:

1. The issue: “The case pits the rights of government workers to free speech and the free exercise of their faith against the Constitution’s prohibition of government endorsement of religion and Supreme Court precedents that forbid pressuring students to participate in religious activities,” the New York Times’ Adam Liptak explains.

2. The significance: It’s “one of its most significant cases on prayer in decades … in a clear test for how the court's new conservative majority may rule on prayer in public schools,” Newsweek’s Julia Duin reports.

Duin adds:

The case focused on whether a high school coach could openly pray after the end of a football game. Arguments included examples from elsewhere in the sports world, with mentions of former Denver Broncos football player Tim Tebow, known for kneeling on the field in prayer, and Egyptian soccer player Mohamed Salah, who kneels in a thanksgiving prayer to Allah after he scores a goal.

Read Plug-in’s past coverage of Tebow’s controversial prayers. Also, see this Duin post — “Coach Joe Kennedy goes to the Supreme Court and the media coverage gets a B+” — here at GetReligion.

3. The hypotheticals: “The U.S. Supreme Court justices spun more than a dozen hypothetical prayer scenarios during oral arguments,” Christianity Today’s Daniel Silliman notes.

The Associated Press’ Jessica Gresko highlights some of those scenarios:

A coach who crosses himself before a game. A teacher who reads the Bible aloud before the bell rings. A coach who hosts an after-school Christian youth group in his home.

Supreme Court justices discussed all those hypothetical scenarios.


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New podcast: Are some SCOTUS justices asking, 'Are all religious schools equal in Maine?'

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New podcast: Are some SCOTUS justices asking, 'Are all religious schools equal in Maine?'

Let’s say that, in the state of Maine, there are two very different “Lutheran” schools. You could, in this hypothetical case, also say “Episcopal,” or “Presbyterian” or “Congregational.”

Leaders at one of these schools insist that their school is in “the Lutheran tradition,” and it may retain ties to a doctrinally liberal flock. The school has a chapel, but attendance is optional since its students (it may be an elite boarding school) come from all kinds of religious faiths or have no stated faith at all. Classes on hot-button moral issues — sexuality, for example — stress this church’s progressive doctrines.

Academic life is very different at the other Lutheran school, which draws most of its students and financial support from a conservative Lutheran body. Chapel attendance is required and classes linked to moral theology are quite countercultural — defending 2,000 years of Christian tradition.

The question, in the latest church-state case at the U.S. Supreme Court, is whether the state of Maine has the power to say that the first school is eligible for tuition support — using tax dollars — because it’s policies do not clash with those in public schools. Students at the conservative school are not eligible, because its beliefs are “sectarian.”

This is tricky territory and church-state experts on the Religious Right would certainly disagree with experts from the Religious Left and secular think tanks. The question discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) is whether journalists covering this case allowed readers a chance to understand the views of activists on both sides.

Let me state, right up front, that my dueling Lutherans illustration is based on “equal access” church-state principles that emerged from a left-right coalition during the Bill Clinton administration. The big idea: If state officials create policies that affect nonprofits, they cannot back secular groups while discriminating against religious organizations. States could, however, deny aid to both. In other words, religious faith is not a uniquely dangerous form of speech or activity.

Let me state this another way. Under the separation of church and state, officials are not supposed to use tax dollars to back state-approved forms of religion. Ah! But what if some religious groups have doctrines that are consistent with state policies, while others clash with the doctrines of the state?


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Don't neglect the Supreme Court's potentially weighty case on religious schools funding

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Don't neglect the Supreme Court's potentially weighty case on religious schools funding

Media eyes are trained on the U.S. Supreme Court's December 1 argument on Mississippi's abortion restrictions, preceded by a fast-tracked November 1 hearing about the stricter law in Texas. But don't neglect the Court's December 8 hearing and subsequent decision on tax funding of religious schools in the potentially weighty Carson v. Makin case (docket #20-1088).

University of Baltimore law Professor Kimberly Wehle certainly wants us to pay heed, warning October 14 via TheAtlantic.com that this is a "sleeper" appeal that "threatens the separation of church and state." In her view, the high court faces not just the perennial problem of public funding for religious campuses. She believes the justices could decide "religious freedom supersedes the public good" by aiding conservative Christian schools that, based on centuries of doctrine, discriminate against non-Christian and LGBTQ students and teachers.

Journalistic backgrounding: Thinly-populated Maine provides an unusual context for this story because the majority of its 260 school districts do not operate full K-12 systems and instead pay tuition for public or private schools that families choose for upper grades. Religiously-affiliated schools are included, but not if Maine deems them "sectarian."

Notably, the parents' plea for tuition is backed by major institutions of the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical Protestants, the Church of God in Christ (the nation's largest African-American denomination), Latter-day Saints (formerly called "Mormons") and Orthodox Judaism, alongside the 63-campus Council of Islamic Schools. A reporter's question: Has such a religious coalition ever formed in any prior Supreme Court case?

Of further interest, the case engages a major religious-liberty theorist, Michael W. McConnell, director of Stanford University's Constitutional Law Center and former federal judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He wrote that circuit's 2008 opinion in Colorado Christian University v Weaver (.pdf here), which tossed out a law that barred "pervasively sectarian" colleges from a state scholarship program.

In Carson, McConnell filed a personal brief September 8 that hands the Supreme Court a history lesson (.pdf here) on religious freedom as conceived when the Constitution's First Amendment was framed. He has explored this ground since a significant Harvard Law Review article in 1989.


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Where are the young? Familiar religion ghosts in WPost report on Maine's aging crisis

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If you have followed international news about abortion and demographics, you are used to seeing headlines such as the following in the New York Times, focusing on a side effect of China’s infamous one-child policy.

That headline: “Teenage Brides Trafficked to China Reveal Ordeal: ‘Ma, I’ve Been Sold’.”

Selling brides? Here is a crucial piece of background material in this must-read piece. Some government policies, you see, have unintended side effects.

China’s “one child” policy has been praised by its leaders for preventing the country’s population from exploding into a Malthusian nightmare. But over 30 years, China was robbed of millions of girls as families used gender-based abortions and other methods to ensure their only child was a boy.

These boys are now men, called bare branches because a shortage of wives could mean death to their family trees. At the height of the gender imbalance in 2004, 121 boys were born in China for every 100 girls, according to Chinese population figures.

Now, it may seem like a stretch, but when I read that Times piece I thought about a stunningly depressing business story that ran the other day in The Washington Post.

This is a story that is packed with religion ghosts — if you pay attention to the ties between religious faith and birth rates that are at replacement level of higher. The headline: “This will be catastrophic’: Maine families face elder boom, worker shortage in preview of nation’s future.”

A preview of America’s future? That appears to be the case. Meanwhile, in Maine, this demographic trend is hitting home in a painful way — in facilities that care for the elderly. Here is a key phrase from this article: “There are simply just not enough people to go around.” Here is a key summary of background material:

Last year, Maine crossed a crucial aging milestone: A fifth of its population is older than 65, which meets the definition of “super-aged,” according to the World Bank.

By 2026, Maine will be joined by more than 15 other states, according to Fitch Ratings, including Vermont and New Hampshire, Maine’s neighbors in the Northeast; Montana; Delaware; West Virginia; Wisconsin; and Pennsylvania. More than a dozen more will meet that criterion by 2030.

Across the country, the number of seniors will grow by more than 40 million, approximately doubling between 2015 and 2050, while the population older than 85 will come close to tripling.

Need more information? Later in the story there is this:


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