Interesting Supreme Court case

It’ll further clarify constitutional law that State’s may fund religious schools. Which will open the door for willing State’s to actually fund religious schools.

smerel, your words are a little confusing. I think you mean that once a state provides any funding for private schools.

Case may turn on “standing” given the two schools are not directly being denied funding by the statute although they might be affected by future funding. Facts here are very narrow and relate to state providing vouchers for private schools in northern Maine which is so sparsely populated and travel distances so long that there are no readily available public school options. State legislature doesn’t want to have to monitor beliefs/teaching of religious schools so they limited funding to private but non-religious schools.

Also see Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer

> separation of church and state

RebE, the concept here is that government pays for general education and it should not care who provides that education. If government decides that they want all citizens to know calculus, then the government may provide such funds to everyone. In the simplest form, you go take a calculus test, and get paid if you pass, it does not matter whether you learned it in a school, yeshiva, convent, or online.

“could have major ramifications for yeshiva parents”

There are only two other states with programs like Maine’s: Vermont and Connecticut. There are no yeshivot in Maine or Vermont. But a few yeshivot in Connecticut may benefit.

But there is a hitch. Actually many hitches. The programs require that the students be charged zero tuition. And the programs require that the schools follow state curriculum mandates and state labor law. Their teachers and nonprofessional staff are unionized.

The programs also have geographic limits.

And an even bigger hitch is that the schools participating in these programs have to accept all students. They can’t discriminate on the basis of religion. Nor can they cherry pick to avoid special education students. They have to be co-ed. Would the yeshivot accept non-Jewish students? There are Jewish schools in the UK, Ireland, and India (!) that do. (When I was in Ireland I had a Catholic cab driver who effusively praised the Jewish school where he was sending his daughter!) Would they allow co-ed classes?

The programs actually work pretty well. But it would be a dramatic change for yeshivot.

Gadol > doesn’t want to have to monitor beliefs/teaching of religious schools

why should they? State is funding general education that they can monitor by testing. If the bochrim can’t write or count, the subsidy goes away. As I suggested above for people, you can do this for schools – every school (including public?) is reimbursed after a test. As of now, some Jewish school participate in private-school tests, but do not make test results available even to parents, at least in my experience.

“why should [state legislature] worry about monitoring teachings of religious schools? State is funding general education that they can monitor by testing”

I think Justice Breyer or Kavanaugh raised a question along the lines of whether a religious school whose core “religious” teaching were racist/white supremacist could receive funding under the Maine program. The Asst. state AG arguing for the statute claimed that it was because the state did not have the ability to to monitor whether a fringe religious school was including such teachings, that it excluded all religious schools and restricted eligibility for funding assistance to private schools.

The Supreme Court is likely to hold that if states which to subsidize non-religious private school, they have to have subsidize religious schools (at least those that meet the same secular criteria). This has almost no impact on us since there are very few places where there is political support to subsidize private (also called “prep”) school, and that any standards on teaching secular subjects would be hard to meet for the better frum schools (i.e. the ones that offer high quality Torah education).

For the record I am against the efforts to get government funding for private education. It will only cause problems. I do agree with the plaintiffs in this case. If the government is funding private education without policing any of the curriculum then why are the religious schools being excluded?

However from a frum perspective government funding of private schools would be bad news. There will almost certainly be rules attached that will exclude Yeshivas. There will also be rules that will greatly increase costs of education and in places like Lakewood and Monsey where the frum community is the majority they will be the ones bearing the bill anyway through their school tax portion of the property bills. Plus you can be certain that down the line the government will make rules that will cause major problems for Yeshivas.

To put things in perspective the Catholic preschools (who unlike Yeshivas have no issue with accepting non-Catholic children) are fighting AGAINST Biden’s Build Back Better funding of preschool education saying that there is no way they can comply with those regulations. That boils down to the (1)government funding of free preschool but (2) but only if they are aren’t religious. That would put them out of business. (Same principal as this court case)

If a state with a large frum population set up such a voucher system for private schools, we (meaning the frum community) could always set up a separate corporation to provide the “English” education, which could accept aid unless it was tied to conditions we found unacceptable. Heretofore, most private schools have been for the very wealthy, which is why few states subsidize them.

Gadol > for the statute claimed that it was because the state did not have the ability to to monitor whether a fringe religious school was including such teachings

By this logic, we should close most public schools and stop giving state funds to any universities. I closely monitor kids in online schools and they have a lot of fringe views. In one case, an English teacher included a Middle East map with “Palestine” (sic) in green and Israel in white ( that is as almost not there, same color as off-map) and balanced a Palestinian anti-Israel story with an Israeli anti-Israel story. This was a one-off, but teaching US Government starting that Electoral college is in the way of progress before explaining why it was created, is more routine (maybe in half of the cases)

akuperman > any standards on teaching secular subjects would be hard to meet for the better frum schools (i.e. the ones that offer high quality Torah education).

a fair point. There are different needs. I presume that if some of parents in these schools would like to teach their kids professions, even a minority, they can organize such a school. If traditional schools will cooperate a little, then such schools can exist as separate entity or as an option in the school.

Volozhin example is something to think about, for sure, but differences are too stark: we are talking to an only Yeshiva, forced by a hostile government to introduce Russian classes, informers, etc – totally breaking educational process. Rav Salanter was offered a job of heading a system of Russian schools and he refused (after a lot of consideration, thinking that he’ll make it less painful).