Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue

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 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. 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. 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. 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==

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 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 the basis of the no-aid provision in the state constitution. where the Court found that preventing the use of public scholarship funds for students entering into studies to prepare for religious ministry was constitutional. Concurrences Justice Thomas wrote his own concurrence which was joined by Gorsuch. Although he agreed with the judgement, Thomas maintained that the Court's past approach to the Establishment Clause was responsible for "hamper[ing] free exercise rights," and he argued that "[r]eturning the Establishment Clause to its proper scope... will go a long way toward allowing free exercise of religion to flourish as the Framers intended." "The American River Ganges". Justice Alito also concurred. Alito cited the Court's earlier decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, in which judgement was partially based on the motivation of outdated Jim Crow laws in the nature of jury verdicts. Alito wrote that the no-aid provision in Montana's constitution must be considered the same way: "Montana's no-aid provision was modeled on the failed Blaine Amendment to the Constitution, which was prompted by virulent prejudice against Catholic immigrants. Montana's claim that the provision merely reflects a state interest in preserving public schools ignores that the public-school (or common-school) movement at the time was itself anti-Catholic. It is also not clear that the anti-Catholic animus was scrubbed from the no-aid provision when it was re-adopted at Montana's constitutional convention in 1972." Justice Gorsuch also wrote a concurrence, emphasizing that the Free Exercise Clause "protects not just the right to be a religious person, holding beliefs inwardly and secretly; it also protects the right to act on those beliefs outwardly and publicly. Our cases have long recognized the importance of protecting religious actions, not just religious status." Sotomayor called the majority's ruling "perverse" in requiring Montana "to reinstate a tax-credit program that the Constitution did not demand in the first place." ==Impact==

The Espinoza decision was considered likely to impact subsequent rules in the 37 states with Blaine amendments. At the time of the decision, 17 states had scholarship programs similar to Montana's. However, some of these, including Florida and Indiana, already permitted such funds to be used for parents' selection of religious schools, despite no-aid clauses in their constitutions. The Institute for Justice, which represented the parents, used the ruling to successfully challenge similar prohibitions against religiously affiliated educational options for parents in Maine and Vermont which blocked the parents' use of such funds. == See also ==