Yesterday, the US Supreme Court heard a case that could profoundly affect the future of education in the United States.

Maine has about 180,000 students enrolled in grades K-12 distributed over 260 school districts. Because of the low population density in some districts, high school students must either attend school in another district or go to private school. Maine has a tuition assistance program that subsidizes tuition for students living in a school district that does not operate a secondary school to assist in this.

Until 1980, the student could use that assistance to attend any school.

the state barred sectarian options after the Maine Attorney General, in 1980, opined that including them as a choice in the program violated the federal Establishment Clause. Me. Op. Att’y Gen. No. 80-2 (1980) (J.A. 35-68). The legislature codified this bar in a statute providing that a student’s chosen school must be “a nonsectarian school in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.” 1981 Me. Laws 2177 (codified at Me. Stat. tit. 20-A, § 2951(2)).

Eventually, some parents sued, and the case made its way to the Supreme Court as Carson v. Makin. The parents claim that instead of bringing Maine into compliance with the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment, it actually goes the other way and violates the First Amendment’s right to free exercise of religion.