Justices Appear Open To Public Funds Going To Religious Schools | What To Do About “Faithless Electors”
January 23, 2020
RUN FOR THE ARK
|“In a case with potentially profound implications, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready to invalidate a provision of the Montana state constitution that bars aid to religious schools. A decision like that would work a sea change in constitutional law, significantly removing the longstanding high wall of separation between church and state.” That’s Nina Totenberg with NPR reviewing a major case that was at the Supreme Court yesterday regarding state allocation of public funds for religious schools. Totenberg explains, “Thirty-seven other states have no-aid state constitutional provisions similar to Montana’s, and for decades conservative religious groups and school-choice advocates have sought to get rid of them. On Wednesday, though, that goal looked a lot closer.”
POTENTIAL SEA CHANGE COMING
|Robert Barnes with The Washington Post had similar takeaways from yesterday’s Supreme Court case, suggesting the conservative justices seemed ready and willing to endorse the provision of tax incentives for religious schools. He writes, “While liberal JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR warned at Wednesday’s oral argument that it would be a ‘radical’ departure for the court, her ideological counterparts said excluding religious institutions from government programs open to others could amount to unconstitutional discrimination. The outcome and breadth of the decision seem to depend on CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN G. ROBERTS JR., who generally has been part of the court’s modern movement to loosen the rules regarding church and state separations. He usually prefers the court to move in incremental ways.”
RED PEN AT THE READY
|Mark Joseph Stern with Slate warns that if the predictions are right, and SCOTUS does allow these public funds to go toward religious schools, it would amount to a “revolutionary rewrite of the First Amendment.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of The Washington Post weighs in on an issue before the Supreme Court this term: so-called “faithless electors.” Earlier this month, justices agreed to take up two cases to determine “whether individual members of the electoral college are free to vote for whomever they please, or whether states may pass laws requiring them to cast votes for the candidate to whom they pledged their votes prior to the election.” The Ed Board argues, “Voters have enough concerns about the legitimacy of the electoral college without adding the risk, however small, that individual electors might not follow the clear expectations of those who choose them. No doubt the political parties would take steps to guarantee the faithfulness of their electors if the Supreme Court granted the electors free agency. But we see no reason to forbid states from making that assurance double sure.”
WE'LL BE GOING IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION
|Adam Edelman with NBC News reports on one of those “faithless electors” who is at the heart of the Supreme Court’s upcoming review of the issue. MICHEAL BACA was a member of the Electoral College in Colorado, and in 2016 he tried to cast his presidential ballot for JOHN KASICH, even though HILLARY CLINTON had won the state’s popular vote. Edelman explains, “That decision — a violation of a law in Colorado (and in 29 other states) requiring electors to cast their votes in accordance with the results of the popular vote — triggered the legal avalanche that has now gone all the way to the Supreme Court after the justices agreed last week to hear the case.”
A CRUEL AND ODD POSITION
|In The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer reflects upon the now-failed suit brought by 21 children arguing the government needs to act on climate change. “Today, the United States finds itself in a cruel and odd position. Most Americans now believe that climate change represents a concerning threat. Yet the two branches constitutionally empowered to do anything about it have, so far, shirked that duty, and it is not clear that further public persuasion will stir them to action. Now the judiciary has tied its hands on the issue. It is time to start asking what changes must take place—perhaps in the Constitution itself—for the country to begin to fight this threat.”