The recent victory for religious liberty and Maine students handed down by the Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin has ties to the Thomas More College community. An amicus curiae brief was filed in the case on behalf of the Pioneer Institute by Board member Michael C. Gilleran (Chairman of the Board; Partner, FisherBroyles LLP). The Maine law that was overturned had excluded religious schools from a state tuition assistance program in violation of the Free Exercise Clause.
“The decision in Makin v. Carson enshrines the principle that government, while providing a general public benefit, cannot discriminate against religious people or institutions from being a recipient. It also makes clear that when individuals themselves, not the state, decide to take a public benefit to which they are entitled to a religious institution, no question of the state establishing or supporting religion is involved,” Gilleran stated. “The state cannot discriminate against religious people, and they are still free!”
The amicus brief takes a strong stance against anti-religious and anti-Catholic bias, but it also makes a compelling argument for the value of the religious education to which Maine students now have increased access. It reads, “religious schools…have repeatedly been demonstrated to afford superior educational outcomes to public schools, and better instill the very inclusive and antidiscriminatory values used by Maine’s legislators to justify discriminating against religious schools. Further, decades of studies consistently have shown that religious schools perform at, and frequently above, the level of public schools, and are particularly successful in educating students of color and other disadvantaged communities” (4.II).
In 2019, Chief Justice John Roberts cited an amicus brief co-authored by Gilleran in the Court’s ruling on Espinoza et al. v. Montana Department of Revenue et al., another important legal win for religious education. At the time, Gilleran wrote that this ruling “swept aside the bulwarks of hundreds of years of government-sponsored religious bigotry in America…The Blaine Amendments are falling. Bells ring on this new day for religious freedom and school choice!” Indeed, let them ring out again!
For further reading:
Board Member Defends Christian Families and Education in the Home
