Houston Chronicle Editorial: School vouchers would be bad for Texas, no matter what the Supreme Court just said

Tuesday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding school vouchers makes it unconstitutional for states to exclude religious schools from programs that use tax dollars to pay private tuition. That’s a matter of constitutional concern for anyone worried the line between church and state is being blurred, especially in public schools. But regardless of those concerns, one thing the decision does not do is change the fact that vouchers are a bad idea for Texas. That said, Tuesday’s 6-3 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts involving a voucher program in Maine will certainly add momentum to efforts by Gov. Greg Abbott to persuade the Legislature to change that come January.

The decision builds on two recent opinions involving programs that struck down laws in Missouri and Montana. The Montana law involved state grants for playground safety equipment, and the Missouri program had offered donors tax deductions for donations to a tuition assistance fund. In both cases, the programs excluded religious schools, in keeping with long-standing Supreme Court jurisprudence under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. But in 2017 and 2020 respectively, the Supreme Court ruled that the discrimination against the religious schools was unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Roberts cast Tuesday’s decision as in perfect keeping with each of those decisions. He noted that in defending its program, Maine had argued that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prevented it from using state money to support a religious education. Both the trial court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Maine, as did all three of the Democrat-appointed justices on the high court. Roberts rejected that view. “There is nothing neutral about Maine’s program,” Roberts wrote. “The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.”