Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue

Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, 591 U.S. 464 (2020), is a landmark

United States Supreme Court decision that a state-based scholarship program that provides public funds to allow students to attend private schools cannot discriminate against religious schools under the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Supreme Court

  • 2.1 Majority opinion

  • 2.2 Concurrences

  • 2.3 Dissents

• 3 Impact

• 4 See also

• 5 References

• 6 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Espinoza_v._Montana_Department_of_Revenue&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Kendra Espinoza, primary plaintiff, on Reason TV in 2020

The state of Montana passed a special income tax credit program in 2015 to help fund non-profit scholarship organizations to help low-income families pay for private schools. For tax payers, they were able to pay up to US$150 into the program and receive a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit to support it. This type of tax-credit scholarship program for private school selection is similar to ones in 23 other states as of 2025.

Montana, as with 37 other states, have so-called Blaine amendments in their constitutions which were originally designed to prevent funding Catholic schools in the 19th century.

Jonathan A. Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League , said that the continued purpose of these Blaine amendments "serve significant government interests — leaving the support of churches to church members, while also protecting houses of worship against discrimination and interference from the government."

In _Mitchell v. Helms _, however, a four-justice plurality of the Supreme Court cast Blaine Amendments in a decidedly less positive light, describing them as "born of bigotry" and deserving to "be buried."

Montana's constitution bars the uses of "any direct or indirect appropriations or payment" to any religious organizations or schools affiliated with religious organizations, also known as the "no-aid" provision. The Montana Department of Revenue (DoR) developed the program's rules around the no-aid provision and disallowed scholarship recipients from choosing to attend religious-affiliated schools, otherwise known as "Rule 1". Rule 1 was controversial even within the state government, as both state legislators and the attorney general had asserted it was not needed, but the DoR implemented it against their cautions, asserting that the scholarship funds were equivalent to appropriations and thus covered by the no-aid provision.

Three low-income families who had children attended Stillwater Christian School in Flathead County and would have been eligible for scholarships through the program filed a lawsuit against the state and sought an injunction against Rule 1, asserting that the rule was unnecessary under the state constitution and, moreover, violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . Their lawsuit was litigated by the Institute for Justice , a non-profit organization that has fought against state laws that enforce the Blaine amendments in their constitutions. In April 2016, they obtained an injunction to block the DoR from enforcing the rule. The state began to appeal this ruling, but otherwise continued the program with the ordered injunction, which allowed additional scholarships to be granted for several children attending Stillwater.

The state's appeal to the Montana Supreme Court was decided in December 2018, and the court ruled in a 5–2 decision that the entire program was unconstitutional because it benefited religious schools. The Court majority stated that the "[Constitution of Montana] more broadly prohibits 'any' state aid to sectarian schools and draws a more stringent line than that drawn by [the U.S. Constitution]." Further, the Court found that even with the DoR's Rule 1 in place, the program still could not prevent any type of aid from the program from ending up at a religious school, and thus nullified the entire program.

Supreme Court

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Espinoza_v._Montana_Department_of_Revenue&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Supreme Court")

The families petitioned to the United States Supreme Court for review, arguing that the Montana Supreme Court's decision to terminate the program violated the Religion Clauses and Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court granted _certiorari _ in June 2019.

Oral arguments were heard on January 22, 2020. The Justices focused on whether the Montana Supreme Court's decision to shut down the entire program was discriminatory towards the sectarian schools and the families who chose to attend them, as well as trying to resolve this case with recent decisions related to the Free Exercise Clause, such as _Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer _, in which the Court previously ruled that blocking public funds to be used by a church to improve playground safety was a violation of the Free Exercise Clause.

Majority opinion

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Espinoza_v._Montana_Department_of_Revenue&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Majority opinion")

The Court issued its decision on June 30, 2020. The 5–4 decision reversed the Montana Supreme Court's ruling and remanded the case.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas , Samuel Alito , Neil Gorsuch , and Brett Kavanaugh . Roberts wrote in his opinion that the no-aid provision violated the Free Exercise clause, as it "bars religious schools from public benefits solely because of the religious character of the schools" and "also bars parents who wish to send their children to a religious school from those same benefits, again solely because of the religious character of the school." Roberts also asserted that the Montana Supreme Court was wrong to invalidate the entire program on th

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