When Amy Carson and her husband David decided to sue the state, they weren’t complicit in the landmark Supreme Court ruling. It was much easier than that. “Our town has an elementary and middle school, but no high school,” Carson says of where her family lives in Maine. And the private school in the neighboring city of Bangor that the Carsons wanted to send her daughter to happened to be Christian.

The Carsons’ hometown of Glenburn, a town of 4,500 on the emerald shores of a warm water lake in rural Maine, is so small that it doesn’t have its own zip code. Maine has 143 districts like them. There are no public high schools in rural areas, and the state compensates by sending children to local private schools.

The Carsons wanted to send their daughter to Bangor Christians, but religion didn’t appeal to them. Carson said the family didn’t go to church “as much as they should”, explaining that she didn’t go at all and her husband only went a few times a year. she says. Her husband is a general contractor and she keeps the business books.

The beauty of Bangor Christian is that it’s a great school. “You talk about small classes and things like that, but that really helped her,” says Carson.

It also had an emotional appeal. It happened to be the school Amy and David Carson attended. All of David’s brothers went there, and his mother was a teacher there.

Tuition was expensive, $5,950 per year. And they have been making financial sacrifices for years. Carson says she had another child before her, but that child died young.

Plus, parents in the district had eight other private schools to choose from, says Amy. Why shouldn’t Bangor Christian be an option? The state seemed to discriminate against religious schools. That nondenominational clause hit the First Amendment’s right to the free exercise of religion by the family. And that’s what their lawsuit was aimed at.

The Carson family didn’t even ask Maine to pay for their daughter’s tuition at Bangor Christian because they knew the state wouldn’t fund an education in a non-denominational school, Carson said. says. Instead, they joined state school commissioner Pender in his lawsuit against Makin.

Carson v. Makin has been called the “sleeper car case.” It barely made the news as it flew under the radar as a judge made a landmark decision on abortion and prayer in schools. But all stakeholders argue that the impact of Carson’s decision will prove equally significant. also have a big impact.

After a lower court ruled against the family, the case went to the Supreme Court, where in a 6-3 ruling, the judges favored the three families, declaring that Maine’s “non-denominational” provision was in effect. declared that it discriminates against religion. Advocates of religious freedom saw the decision as a victory, but in a dissenting opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote:

While that is debatable, the incident could have far-reaching implications for K-12 education. The decision extends two of his previous Supreme Court decisions upholding the privatization of education and the use of public funds for religious school education. His 2020 judgment in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue states that tax-funded scholarships can be used in private schools. Religious establishments, and his 2002 landmark judgment in her Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case, Ohioans using publicly funded vouchers to send their children to religious schools in certain circumstances was allowed to

Kevin Werner, director of the National Center for Education Policy and professor of education at the University of Colorado Boulder, says the trend toward privatization represents the hollowing out of the country’s public schools. Equalizer to what Werner likened to the developing world.

But educational freedom advocates are a catchall for programs as diverse as school choice, vouchers, and public funding for private religious schools, and providing parents with a wide range of choices benefits children. “I think[competition]pushes schools — public schools and others — to do better,” says Carson. Educational freedom also enables parents to send their children to school and reinforce the values ​​they are teaching at home, adds Carson.

Advocates of educational freedom say the judge’s decision did not explicitly endorse religious schools. ’ said Andrew Handel, director of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Education and Workforce Task Force. Country.

Asked whether there could be a flurry of state laws securing the state’s right to channel public funds to private religious schools in the wake of the Carson case, Handel said there was no need for such legislation. “That said, I think this lawsuit will make it easier for the state legislature to pass a major program on educational freedom.”

Further, advocates of educational freedom argue that the so-called “separation wall” stems from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson and is not actually enshrined in the Constitution. , was never meant to be outright secularized, says Rick Hess, director of education policy research at the American Enterprise Institute. “The public school system as we know it was founded in the 1830s and 1840s as regular schools.” Because they tried to discourage certain things and force them to read Protestant Bibles in schools,” says Hess, referring to Mann, who is widely known as the father of American education.

Regarding the argument that school choice hollows out public education, educational freedom advocates point out that even without formal school choice, the free market creates choice for families with the means. . A particular school, public or other home base. “The question is who can choose which school to choose,” says Michael McShane, director of national research at EdChoice, a nonprofit that aims to promote educational freedom and choice. “It’s not about whether there is school choice or whether it exists. It’s about ‘Who gets it now?'”

Besides, public schools are already segregated and suffer from the problems associated with centralized poverty, McShane admits. And there are no silver bullets. So instead of confining students to public schools, why not offer parents the option of sending their children elsewhere, such as private religious schools?

Educational Freedom Initiatives “cannot solve poverty. They cannot cure racism, so all of these will still affect children and the choices they have,” McShane said. “But the idea is to try to give as many kids as possible more options.”

But for some Americans, school choice doesn’t mean more choices. It says it means less because it opens the door to public funding for institutions that discriminate based on student or family.

“We are moving away from the public school system designed to serve the entire community and into publicly funded schools run by churches and other providers outside the control of the community.” says Welner.

In the long run, those currently advocating for more public funding for private schools would probably want to reduce those subsidies, Welner explained, adding, “The goal of privatization is… It also reduces the tax burden,” he said.

This would mean an eventual shift away from not just publicly funded education, but a system where the family bears the cost of the burden, leading to even more stratification and discrimination than already exists in this country. As in India and other developing countries, some American families “have access to quality education for their children, while others do not,” says Werner.

“Education has private and public benefits. When my daughter goes to school, the school is providing her and my family with the private benefit of helping her succeed in life. But our schools also serve the public good: they serve our economy, they serve our democracy,” says Werner. “America’s education is being transformed. This transformation puts many interests at risk.”

Amy Carson disagrees.

She pointed out that before 1981, Maine offered parents to send their children to private religious schools if there were no public schools in the area. That “non-denominational” clause was imposed in her 1981, so as she sees it, the recent ruling restores the previous system. “This kind of program has been around for hundreds of years and we (the country) have had no problems running it,” she says.

A narrow interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling applies to only 2% of the state’s population, she adds.

The ruling does not apply to the Carsons because their daughter is already in college. But their individual circumstances never mattered. Participating in litigation was always in the interest of the community, not theirs. Anytime it’s a win.

This story appears in the October issue Deseret Magazine. Details on how to subscribe.