Eulitt v. State of Maine, No. 04-1496 (1st Cir. October 22, 2004)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has ruled that Maine’s law allowing local school districts to satisfy their statutory duty to provide all school-aged persons with "an opportunity to receive the benefits of a free public education" by paying tuition expenses for students attending nonsectarian private schools, but not sectarian schools, does not violate students’ Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights. A federal district court had rejected a constitutional challenge to the law by parents whose children were attending Catholic school. The district court refused the parents’ invitation to reconsider the state law in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), and Locke v. Davey,
540 U.S. 712 (2004). The district court ruled that it was still bound by the First Circuit’s decision in Strout v. Albanse, 178 F.3d 57 (1st Cir. 1999), upholding the Maine statute. While First Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision, it refused to do so based on a rote application of Strout without first examining the effect that Zelman and Davey may have had on the case’s viability. Addressing the parents’ claim of religious discrimination, the court rejected the parents’ attempt to couch the claim in terms of equal protection rather than free exercise of religion. Under Davey, "the Free Exercise Clause's protection of religious beliefs and practices from direct government encroachment does not translate into an affirmative requirement that public entities fund religious activity simply because they choose to fund the secular equivalents of such activity," the court noted. As a result, Maine’s refusal to provide public funds for religious education does not impermissibly interfere with parents’ fundamental right to choose religious education for their children. Applying the factors enunciated in Davey, the court also rejected the parents’ contention that the statute’s exclusion of sectarian institutions demonstrates animus against religion. The law does not (1) impose criminal or civil sanctions on religious practice, (2) inhibit political participation, or (3) require state residents to surrender their religious convictions in order to receive the benefit offered by the state, namely secular education. Zelman and Davey, far from undermining Strout’s holding that the statute does not violate free exercise of religion, reinforce that holding.
Eulitt v. State of Maine, No. 04-1496 (1st Cir. October 22, 2004)
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