Maine court upholds law excluding religious schools from state tuition program

A federal court in Maine rejected an appeal on Thursday for a pause in enforcing antidiscrimination laws that the Catholic plaintiffs allege violate constitutional freedoms. Maine reimburses families in rural areas for tuition to nearby private and public schools instead of running state schools in isolated areas with low populations. The state enacted an antidiscrimination law requiring all schools eligible for tuition reimbursement to follow state antidiscrimination codes, including the Maine Human Rights Act. The law requires schools to either allow any form of religious expression or none at all. For example, this would require Catholic schools to mount services for other religions in order to have a Catholic Mass. The law also gives the state’s Human Rights Commission final authority on how schools teach students about marriage, sexuality, and gender. Religious institutions take issue with the state requiring religious schools to potentially violate their convictions in order to qualify for the tuition reimbursement program. The Diocese of Portland, St. Dominic Academy and a Catholic family sued the state alleging the antidiscrimination laws violated their free exercise rights.

What was the court’s reasoning? The court rejected the plaintiffs' appeal, judging that further legal efforts by the plaintiffs would likely be unsuccessful. While the opinion ruling did acknowledge that the plaintiffs raised significant constitutional issues, the case merits are not strong enough to enforce a full injunction, the court ruled. The plaintiffs do not have sufficient evidence proving that the educational anti-discrimination provisions impose unconstitutional conditions on students and schools, the opinion said.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 found Maine’s previous statute on reimbursement violated the free exercise clause because it automatically disqualified religious, or sectarian, schools. The new Maine law requires schools to adhere to state codes rather than singling out religious groups, which proponents claim makes it nondiscriminatory.

Dig deeper: Read Lindsay Mast’s report for more detail on the legal battle for tuition reimbursement.