Supreme Court Ruling Proves Once Again That Religion And Education Are Inseparable

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Maine’s policy of allowing parents to use school vouchers for religious schools was not a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the national government from establishing a state religion. In a rare moment of principle, Chief Justice John Roberts rightly asserted in the majority opinion that excluding religious schools from the voucher program was blatant religious discrimination.

This is significant for school choice. It illustrates just how feasible it is to implement school choice and how well it can work. Because the state is largely rural and students are scattered across such a wide area, it was a matter of necessity to outsource schooling to private organizations that could accommodate families where they were. By sending money to parents directly, Maine’s taxpayers are free from the massive cost of building so many campuses and staffing them.

Other state governments looking to save money on funding public schools while encouraging high-quality education may want to imitate this model. In most of the country, only the families who live in affluent areas or can pay for private schools have real access to a quality education. Meanwhile, poorer families are forced to rely on inferior public schools because they have no other options.