Religious Bigotry in Colorado The anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment is Used to Kill Vouchers.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/religious-bigotry-in-colorado-1435873668
This week the Colorado Supreme Court dusted off a relic from the state’s anti-Catholic past to strike down a school voucher program. The charming result of this less-than-charitable secularism will be to deny poor children their right to a good education.
Taxpayers for Public Education v. Douglas County challenged the Choice Scholarship Program in the state’s third largest county. Since 2011 the program has offered voucher grants to help students defray the cost of tuition at some 23 private schools that they otherwise could not afford.
The Colorado Supreme Court held 4-3 that because 16 of these schools are “religious in character,” the program violates a section of the state constitution that states no taxpayer funds can be used to “support or sustain” any institution controlled by a “sectarian denomination.” Amid the nativist wave of the 1870s and 1880s, 39 states came to adopt these so-called Blaine Amendments that were meant to target immigrants, religious minorities and Catholic parochial schools.
According to the court’s liberal justices, the Blaine Amendment means that “no state funding whatsoever” can be provided to parents who might use them at a religious school. This will come as news to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in a landmark 2002 decision held that school vouchers like those in Douglas County that indirectly benefit religious institutions do not amount to the state establishment of religion.
As Colorado Justice Allison Eid notes in a dissent, the decision is so “breathtakingly broad” that it would likely invalidate any number of state programs—roads, bridges and sidewalks—because they too help “support and sustain” religious organizations. She adds that the majority “simply stuck its head in the sand and hopes that because it cannot see the allegations of anti-Catholic bias, no one else will.”
What Justice Eid means is that under several Colorado precedents, the state courts usually weigh the xenophobic origins and animus of laws when deciding if the state constitution is enforceable. Presumably the court’s liberals dropped that obligation because they preferred the anti-choice outcome.
If there’s a silver lining, the Douglas County school district may appeal to the Supreme Court, which could decide if state Blaine Amendments are constitutional. These effluents of the 19th century have overstayed their welcome, especially if they’ve merely become a pretext for modern liberals to undermine school choice for kids.
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