Monday, February 3, 2020

Supreme Court takes on Christian Schools Case


There has always been division between people and diverse groups that think differently in our society. Separation of church and state is one example of growing aggravation between groups in government. There has been a growing battle within the supreme court about whether religion should be considered in government decisions. After much protest against this, the supreme court ruled to separate church and state.

However as it says in the article Supreme Court Takes Up Church-State Separation in Christian School Case by NBC, "The Supreme Court has never drawn a bright line between acceptable and prohibited public aid for religious programs" (Pete Williams). This is stating that although it is agreed upon for the government to remain secular, there is no clear line of what the Supreme Court should do when handling cases on religion.

The article talks about a case taken up by the supreme court on a scholarship offered to parents to send their children to private schools. However, the scholarship was only offered to parents who didn't send their children to religious private schools as the scholarship program didn't want to endorse religious education. One mother stated that "They should be treating families that want to go to religious schools the same as families that want to go to nonreligious schools. Not doing so, Smith said, violates the First Amendment's protection of free exercise of religion." The supreme court later ruled the scholarship program unconstitutional and banned it for religious and secular schools.

In my opinion, the scholarship program had no right to ban certain schools from receiving the scholarship as they do not have the right to tell low income households what schools to send their children to. The government should be neutral in this situation and not let their preferences on religion get in the way of their decisions. There have been several other cases like this that put into question if a person's freedom to exercise religion is being prohibited and it is not acceptable. The Supreme court need to make a definite decision on whether the government can help and support religious programs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-takes-church-state-separation-christian-schools-case-n1117006