An official says the state does not have to let towns pay religious school tuition.
A U.S. magistrate has recommended that a judge rule against two Minot families who want the town to pay for their daughters to attend a religious high school.
The families, who live in a town with no high school, filed suit in U.S. District Court a year ago to challenge a 1981 state law that forbids Maine towns from paying student tuition to religious schools. Citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed states to pay for religious schools, they claimed Maine’s ban was unconstitutional and discriminatory.
In a decision filed last month, the magistrate said that the Supreme Court ruled states could pay for religious schools but doesn’t have to. She said the Minot families had the same educational options as other families and were not being discriminated against.
The families have filed an objection to the magistrate’s recommendation.
The Minot families’ attorney, Stephen Whiting, maintained that it isn’t fair for the small town to pay tuition to any private or public school but not to a religious school.
“That’s the problem. We say that’s discrimination based on religion,” he said. “The magistrate didn’t seem to grasp it.”
The judge could follow all or part of the magistrate’s recommendation. He could also choose to ignore it. The judge is expected to make his ruling “any day now,” Whiting said.
The American Center for Law and Justice in Virginia filed the suit last October on behalf of Kelly MacKinnon and her daughter, and John and Belinda Eulitt and their daughter. Like many small towns in Maine, Minot does not have a high school and pays tuition for students to attend class elsewhere.
Minot has a contract to send 90 percent of its students to the nearby Poland Regional High School. It will pay for the remaining 10 percent to attend another nonsecular public or private school as long as parents can show that their children have educational requirements that can’t be met at Poland Regional.
MacKinnon and the Eulitts claimed Catholic classes were an educational requirement that couldn’t be met at Poland. They sent their daughters to St. Dominic Regional High School in Auburn.
Tuition costs just over $5,280 this year, according to the high school’s Web site.
Maine is currently facing two lawsuits over its ban on to paying tuition to religious schools.
In the other, the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm, filed a lawsuit in state court last September on behalf of a Minot family, two Durham families and three Raymond families. A court date has not yet been set in that case.
ltice@sunjournal.com
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