Justices Open Door to School Choice Funding for Religious Groups

The US Supreme Court’s latest church-state ruling will have implications far beyond Maine, requiring states to include religious groups in taxpayer-funded school choice programs.

Maine and Vermont are the only states that subsidize private schools in rural and sparsely populated areas where it doesn’t make financial sense to establish a government-run school. An ideologically split court said Tuesday in Carson v. Makin that the state must allow parents to use that money for religious education, too.

Advocates on the left and the right agree that the majority’s reasoning doesn’t turn on the unique structure of Maine’s educational system and will ...