The First Amendment prohibits the government from "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In her dissent yesterday in the school choice case Carson v. Makin, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused Chief Justice John Roberts of tipping the scales overwhelmingly and unfairly in favor of the Free Exercise Clause. "This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build," she declared.
The case centered on a Maine program that provides tuition assistance to the families of students who live in a district that does not operate its own secondary school. Those families may use that assistance to send their kids to a secondary school of their own choosing, either public or private, so long as it meets certain state standards. One key restriction was that families and students were forbidden from choosing a private school that offered "sectarian" education, even if that school otherwise met the state's standards.
