Maine Catholic schools to be excluded from tuition grant program

CNA Staff, Aug 9, 2024 / 14:26 pm

Catholic schools will be excluded from Maine’s tuition grant program, a Maine district court affirmed on Thursday.  

The court ruled that while the plaintiffs “are raising important legal questions,” they are “not entitled to a preliminary injunction,” according to the 75-page order.

Maine’s tuition program is designed to fund tuition for students in rural areas to attend nearby private or public schools in lieu of the state maintaining its own schools in those areas. Maine also funds tuition for out-of-state and out-of-country schools including schools in Quebec and Massachusetts. 

The program was designed to enable parents to have their children educated at private schools in rural school districts lacking public schools, but in 1982, Maine began disqualifying religious schools for being sectarian.

Though the landmark 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision Carson v. Makin affirmed that the “sectarian exclusion” violates the free exercise clause because it excludes schools on the basis of their religious exercise, Maine instituted another law that more indirectly prevents religious schools from being approved for the tuition program.

One of those religious schools is St. Dominic Academy, a K–12 Catholic school with campuses in Lewiston and Auburn, where Keith and Valori Radonis, organic rural farmers, wanted to send their children. 

After Maine amended the tuition assistance program with a “human rights” law that kept out schools like St. Dominic, the Radonis family, St. Dominic, and the Diocese of Portland turned to religious liberty law firm Becket to combat the law. 

“Maine officials are keeping religious families and schools out in the cold,” Adèle Auxier Keim, senior counsel at Becket, said in a statement shared with CNA. “The district court’s decision allows the state to continue paying for all-girls boarding schools in Massachusetts while denying benefits to rural families that want to attend St. Dominic, which has been serving Mainers for more than 80 years.”

“Maine’s new laws block schools that receive tuition funds from allowing any religious expression unless they allow every kind — meaning that a Catholic school like St. Dominic can’t have Mass unless it also allows a Baptist revival meeting,” the Becket press release from June 2023 explained. 

“It also gives the state’s Human Rights Commission — not parents and schools — the final word on how the school teaches students to live out Catholic beliefs regarding marriage, gender, and family life,” it continued. “As a result, faith-based schools are still being barred from serving rural families through the program.”

The new restrictions are largely viewed on both sides as a way around the Supreme Court decision.

On the day the Supreme Court decided to include religious schools in tuition programs, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey stated in a press release: “I am terribly disappointed and disheartened by today’s decision … I intend to explore … statutory amendments to address the court’s decision and ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.”

As evidence of religious targeting, Becket pointed to public social media posts by Maine officials saying that Maine “anticipated the ludicrous decision from the far-right SCOTUS” by amending the tuition program, the Aug. 8 court order noted.  

“We will continue to push back against Maine’s transparent efforts to evade Carson v. Makin and make an end run around the Supreme Court,” Keim said.