In a win for education pluralism, this
week the Supreme Court ruled in Carson v.
Makin that private school choice programs cannot exclude religious schools
based on religious identification or practice. Although the practical
ramifications of the decision are currently limited, the ramifications for
education pluralism are anything but.

Carson is
focused on an uncommon private school choice program in Maine. As the state
with the highest percentage of rural residents, over half of Maine’s school
administrative units—essentially districts—do not operate public high schools.
In these administrative units, Maine lets students enroll in other schools,
including private schools that meet certain requirements. In the case of
private schools, parents select schools from a state-approved list, and then
the state sends funds to that school to offset at least a portion of that
student’s tuition.

Since 1981, Maine has excluded religious
schools from this tuition assistance program. Tuesday’s 6-3 decision by the
Supreme Court ruled that this exclusion is unconstitutional. Writing for the
majority, Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized that the decision does not mean
Maine, or any other state, must subsidize religious education, but that those states
that do offer such a subsidy cannot exclude schools because of religion. In
Roberts’s own words, “[Maine] pays tuition for certain students at private
schools—so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination
against religion.”

The operational implications of Carson v. Makin are relatively small: Maine’s “Town Tuitioning Program” serves about 4,500 students, and most private school choice programs in other states do not exclude religious schools. Nonetheless, the implications for how the law upholds principles of education pluralism and liberalism are profound.

Schooling is neither valueless nor
value-neutral. Schools don’t only teach skills or content. Schools also teach
that certain things are right, that certain values are important, that certain conduct
is exemplary. Lying is wrong, tolerance is important, and Abraham Lincoln lived
nobly—any third grader will learn as much from a public school education, and
most people won’t take exception to that. But many Americans do wish that their
child’s education covered values that a public school doesn’t, or covered them differently.
There is a reason that three-quarters of students who attend private schools attend
religiously-affiliated or “sectarian” private schools.

And nor should we have a problem with
that: America is a liberal country that values pluralism, including religious
pluralism. Though we may often forget this, liberalism—especially American
liberalism—was not designed to promote secularism above religion. Religious
tolerance doesn’t mean merely tolerating religion. It doesn’t even mean that
the state should accept the validity of different religious traditions. It
means the state can and should leave the question of the validity of different
religious traditions to its citizens, and allow them to pursue those religious
traditions, not on the side but as alternatives to prevailing secular modes of
life.

Within certain constraints, American
liberalism should allow people to pursue the good life in accordance with their
understanding of what the good life is. Maine’s law did not. It treated secular
private schools as superior to and more valid than religious alternatives, and
was neither pluralistic nor liberal. Not only is this religious discrimination,
it is at odds with our founding values, values that the court reaffirmed on
Tuesday.

Naturally, many might worry about the
separation of church and state—as they should. However, by allowing Maine
parents to send their students to the full range of private schools, this
ruling favors no religion. Some might further worry that the state is required
to fund religious instruction, but—as Roberts pointed out—Maine is not required
to fund private schools at all. They have other options short of religious
discrimination.

For school choice proponents, the fear of eroding separations of church and state—the fear which animated Justice Sotomayor’s dissent—may put a dark lining on this silver cloud, even if it is overblown. Most states that offer private school choice are unaffected by this decision because they already operate in accordance with its demands. However, expansion of school choice programs in states that do not already offer private school choice, already a tough task, might have just gotten a little bit harder. Those states, mostly blue, may now have more reason to resist choice programs because proponents can be painted as soft on separation of church and state.

Despite this potential headwind for school choice expansion, the Carson ruling is another step in the right direction. In Carson, as it did in the Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza cases that preceded it, the court again affirmed increasingly broad legal parameters of American education pluralism. That pluralism is good for school choice, good for families, and good for the country.

The post Carson v. Makin is a Win for Liberalism and Education Pluralism appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.