About the Author
Key Findings
- In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Carson v. Makin the state cannot prevent families from using a generally-available public tuition assistance program to send their children to private religious schools.
- Carson, and the cases leading up to Carson, have the effect of repealing Washington state's Blaine Amendments.
- Washington state's Blaine Amendments no longer have any effect because they violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
- Lawmakers in Washington state are now free to debate school choice bills like the four bills introduced during the 2022 legislative session.
- These bills would give families who want options up to $10,000 to send their children to private school.
Introduction
On June 21, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held 6-3 in the landmark case of Carson, et al v. Makin that the state cannot prevent families from using a generally-available public tuition assistance program to send their children to private religious schools. This case and the cases leading up to Carson have the effect of repealing Washington state’s Blaine Amendments, measures adopted in the 1880s to ban public assistance to private “sectarian” schools, primarily targeting Catholic schools.
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ended state policies that discriminate against parent-directed aid for private schools, states with programs that offer families general public aid cannot use the Blaine Amendments to deny families access to private religious schools.
This Policy Note describes and explains the Carson v Makin case, and the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020) and Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017) that addressed anti-religious discrimination.
Legal commentators summarize this line of cases as follows:
“Over the years, the Supreme Court has gradually moved from the principle of “no aid” to religion to one of “neutrality,” which permits aid, provided it is available to a wide range of recipients, not just religious ones.”
The following sections explain these legal findings in detail.
###