Lawyers for a Liberty University student are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit a decades-old ruling that prohibits religious studies majors from receiving grants through a state-funded tuition assistance program, arguing that more recent rulings have allowed taxpayer dollars to go to religious schools.
The nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), along with First Liberty Institute, Troutman Pepper Locke and the National Legal Foundation, filed a petition before the high court Tuesday on behalf of Liberty University student Bethany Hall.
Hall lost her tuition assistance at the Virginia-based Evangelical institution, awarded under the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant Program, because she chose to pursue a music and worship major rather than a music education major as she originally planned.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Hall, citing the 2004 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Locke v. Davey, which held that a Washington state law excluding students pursuing religious studies degrees from a state-funded tuition assistance program did not violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
Hall’s attorneys argue that Locke misinterpreted the First Amendment and are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in Hall’s favor and overturn the decision.
“It is odious to our Constitution for a state to fund a degree in music but refuse to fund a degree in music & worship,” said Steven Fitschen of the National Legal Foundation in a statement published Wednesday. “The Free Exercise clause is meant to encourage and even prefer religion.”
“But Virginia’s decision to deny funding based upon religious use is the type of hostility toward religion rejected by the First Amendment,” he added.
Josh Davey, the student whose tuition assistance request was denied by Washington state more than two decades ago because of his intent to pursue religious studies, is now an attorney with Troutman Pepper Locke and is representing Hall.
“Twenty-two years ago, the Supreme Court’s decision allowed states to single out students like me because our course of study related to our religious calling.” He added, “I am hopeful that the Court will correct that decision and treat students like Bethany equally.”
John Bursch, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said its unconstitutional for the government to deny publicly available benefits “because a student’s major is too religious,” saying it amounts to “religious discrimination.”
Writing the 7-2 majority opinion in Locke, Chief Justice William Rehnquist stated that Washington’s “disfavor of religion” doesn’t impose “criminal nor civil sanctions on any type of religious service or rite” and doesn’t “deny to ministers the right to participate in the political affairs of the community.”
“And it does not require students to choose between their religious beliefs and receiving a government benefit,” he wrote. “The State has merely chosen not to fund a distinct category of instruction.”
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined in dissent of the majority. Scalia wrote that when a State makes a public benefit generally available, “that benefit becomes part of the baseline against which burdens on religion are measured.”
“[W]hen the State withholds that benefit from some individuals solely on the basis of religion, it violates the Free Exercise Clause no less than if it had imposed a special tax,” Scalia wrote.
The petition contends that Locke is inconsistent with three subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on religious liberty: Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue and Carson v. Makin.
In the 2017 Trinity Lutheran case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Missouri could not exclude Trinity Lutheran Church from a secular aid program to help repair its playground surface because of its religious affiliation.
Three years later, in Espinoza, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Montana could not exclude religious schools from a state tax credit program. In the 2022 Carson decision, the court ruled that Maine’s prohibition on using tuition-program funds at religious schools was unconstitutional. That program allows students in towns without public high schools to attend private schools.
“Only this Court can overrule Locke, and there is every reason for this Court to overturn that erroneous decision now. Locke was wrong when it was decided, and this Court’s subsequent caselaw has further eviscerated its fatally flawed foundation,” the petition states. “Yet Locke remains the law of the land, so many States’ education-funding programs continue to treat disfavored religious degrees worse than all secular studies, unconstitutionally marginalizing people of faith.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
Continue reading
