Kavanaugh Could Unlock Funding for Religious Education, School Voucher Advocates Say

The following article by Erica L. Green was posted on the New York Times website August 14, 2018:

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, in Washington in July. Over his decades-long legal career, Judge Kavanaugh has argued in favor of religious freedom in education. Credit: Erin Schaff for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a speech last year, gave a strong hint at his views on taxpayer support for religious schools when he praised his “first judicial hero,” Justice William Rehnquist, for determining that the strict wall between church and state “was wrong as a matter of law and history.”

Mr. Rehnquist’s legacy on religious issues was most profound in “ensuring that religious schools and religious institutions could participate as equals in society and in state benefits programs,” Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to succeed Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court, declared at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization.

Words like that from a Supreme Court nominee are breathing new life into the debate over public funding for sectarian education. Educators see him as crucial to answering a question left by Justice Kennedy after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for the state of Missouri to exclude a church-based preschool from competing for public funding to upgrade its playground: Can a church-school playground pave the way for taxpayer funding to flow to private and parochial schools for almost any purpose?

View the complete article here.