Religion’s ‘free exercise’ could boomerang, in Maine and nation

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The U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s 6-3 determination handed down Tuesday in Carson v. Makin will not be a shock: It struck down a 1981 regulation that restricted “college alternative” funding to secular faculties.

Douglas Rooks

Its instant impact shall be restricted; Maine has an uncommon “college alternative” system by which cities with no faculties – there are lots of within the frivolously populated hinterlands – ship college students wherever they need to go, at public expense.

But it additionally represents a tectonic shift in our understanding of the Structure, as interpreted by the courtroom. Like many options of our founding doc, it has provisions that look like in rigidity.

The Maine case entails two key phrases of the First Modification, again to again. Congress is restricted from “creating an institution of faith” and in addition barred from “prohibiting the free train thereof.”