Supreme Court mulls church-state separation again in religious school funding case

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• Judy Woodruff:

  The Supreme Court grappled once again today with the issue of church and state.

  As John Yang reports, today's arguments about whether taxpayer funds can be used to pay tuition at religious schools in Maine comes on the heels of recent cases in which the justice has sided with religious freedom advocates.

• John Yang:

  Olivia Carson lives in a Maine town so small that it doesn't have its own high school.

  In this largely rural state, more than half the school districts don't have high schools. Those districts help pay tuition at state-approved private schools, if that's what parents want. Olivia's parents chose Bangor Christian Schools, which both of them had attended as well.

  Olivia's mother, Amy.

• Amy Carson, Plaintiff:

  Really good academics, small classroom size, pretty much a family atmosphere. You didn't worry when they went to school.

• John Yang:

  They also liked what the school describes as a high school curriculum designed from a biblical world view.

• Amy Carson:

  The same kind of atmosphere we have at the house is the same atmosphere she has at school and the same teachings and the same kind of guidelines and structure.

• John Yang:

  But that faith-based teaching is also why the state wouldn't allow tuition payments for Olivia, who graduated earlier this year and is now in college.

  So, the Carsons, backed by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian group, sued, saying that violated their First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion.

• Amy Carson:

  So, you see kids that can't or families that can't afford to send their kids where they really want to send them that should be able to. To exclude the school solely based on its faith-based academics, it's not right.

• John Yang:

  Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that a state can't exclude schools from a tax-credit-backed scholarship program simply because they're affiliated with a church.

  In this case, the justices are being asked whether taxpayer money may go to schools providing religious instruction.

  Tom Cunniff, General Counsel, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: The government should not be in the religious sphere.

• John Yang:

  Tom Cunniff is general counsel for the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, which filed a brief supporting the state of Maine.

• Tom Cunniff:

  Because religious education is fundamentally different, it is appropriate for the state of Maine to say, we do not want to be involved and entangled in religious education.

• John Yang:

  In today's oral arguments, the ideological differences between some of the justices was evident. Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, warned against government choosing among religions.

• Stephen Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice:

  There are 65 religions or more in this country, and they believe a lot of different things. And what's worrying me is that, if the school — if the state must give money to the schools, they're going to get into all kinds of religious disputes.

• John Yang:

  But Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, suggested that Maine's restriction on sectarian education could do just that. He posed a hypothetical to Maine's lawyer about a religious school teaching non-discrimination and universal respect.

• Samuel Alito, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice:

  These are principles that we think our students should keep in mind, consistent with the religious outlook of our community. Would that school be disqualified?

• Christopher Taub, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Maine:

  I think what what the defining feature — or what would make the difference is whether children are being taught that your religion demands that you do these things, that your religion…

• Samuel Alito:

  Well, then you really are discriminating on the basis of religious belief.

• John Yang:

  Today's case is one of three dealing with religious rights the court is considering this term.

  Marcia Coyle, "The National Law Journal": So, this is a court that not only is very interested in how religion is being treated, but also feels very strongly that the free exercise clause in particular in the First Amendment should be aggressively enforced or implemented.

• John Yang:

  Marcia Coyle is chief Washington correspondent for "The National Law Journal."

• Marcia Coyle:

  I think the court fell into something of a familiar pattern with these cases. You had the court's conservative majority being very skeptical of the state of Maine's arguments.

  And then you had the three justices on the liberal wing of the court who feel that, now, wait a minute, this is almost, if we strike down this program and require a state to fund religious schools, that's almost a step too far in terms of what the court has been doing, that there still is separation of church and state.

• John Yang:

  The justices will deliver their decisions in the three religion cases by the end of June 2022.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm John Yang.