Republicans, Catholics and the West: Explaining the Strength of Religious School Aid Prohibitions

Abstract

In the current polarized political climate there is heightened attention paid to the American state constitutional provisions known as "Blaine

Attenuated Governance: How Policymakers Insulate Private School Choice from Legal Challenge

“…After the Supreme Court struck down segregated education, state governments’ attempts to perpetuate it were vulnerable to legal challenge. Forty state constitutional provisions prohibiting public aid for denominational schools make it risky to fund religious education openly (Hackett, ).…”

“…The overwhelming majority of the vouchers (96 percent in the Ohioan case) were spent at religious schools. For opponents, voucher programs violated the separation of church and state (enshrined in 40 state “Blaine Amendments” and the First Amendment) by unconstitutionally aiding religious institutions (Hackett, ). “Child benefit theory” and attenuated policy design could help here: by funding the individual consumer and not the school directly, the state could avoid legal confrontation (Hackett, ).…”

“…They are one of the grounds for challenging the constitutionality of voucher programs, although there are many others. There is lively scholarly dispute about the extent to which these No‐Aid Provisions and their failed federal counterpart reflected anti‐Catholic animus (Green, ; Hackett, ; Viteritti, ), but it is undisputed that the majority passed during a period of widespread anti‐Catholicism. States with larger Catholic populations were statistically significantly more likely to pass strongly worded No‐Aid Provisions than those with smaller Catholic populations (Hackett, ).…”

Theorizing the Submerged State: The Politics of Private Schools in the United States

“…The money does not go to the school directly but through an STO, which provides scholarships for the children or through tax deductions for parents who spend the money on their child's education. For example, even in Illinois, which has a very strong No‐Aid Provision (Hackett, , p. 511), six Illinoisan state courts found the Illinois Education Expenses Tax Credit constitutional in two lawsuits (Griffith v. Bower, ; Toney v. Bower, ) . The grounds for the decision were that the credit allows parents to keep more of their own money to spend on the education of their children as they see fit, through “true private choice,” and does not involve the [direct] expenditure of government money (Berg, ; Underkuffler, ).…”

“… Hackett () creates a quantitative scale of No‐Aid Provision strength that codifies the stridency of amendment language and the extent of the prohibitions of public aid to denominational schools. The index runs from 0 to 10, with 10 representing the strongest No‐Aid Provisions.…”