Greenblatt attacked this week’s bombshell Supreme Court ruling, forcing the state of Maine to stop discriminating against religious schools.
On Tuesday, he posted a tweet saying: “We are deeply concerned by yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in #CarsonvMakin. While private religious education can be costly, this ruling weakens the core principle of church-state separation and could set a highly problematic precedent.”
Greenblatt is incorrect. In addition, he adopted the exact talking points of the liberal Justices, who defended Maine’s decision to exclude religious schools from its state-funded private school tuition program.
This ruling does not harm “church-state separation”, nor does it violate the establishment clause in any way. It merely says that the state cannot arbitrarily decide that religious parents who are receiving tuition funding from the state are not allowed to choose religious schools (including yeshivas) to educate their children.
The state’s law was discriminatory, plain and simple. Forcing Maine to treat religious schools like every other private school in no way sets a dangerous precedent.
In fact, virtually every Jewish group (other than the ADL) praised the ruling, including the Orthodox Union, National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), Agudath Israel of America, National Council of Young Israel and Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty (JCRL).
Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath Israel’s vice president for government affairs, said that the ruling should allow other states that attempt to block aid to religious organizations to “effectively feel free to now enact programs that encourage or provide assistance to religious schools on an equal basis with other nonpublic schools.”
“Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court is the culmination of decades of determined advocacy by the Orthodox Union and our partners,” Nathan Diament, the Orthodox Union’s executive director for public policy, said. “The essential promise of the First Amendment’s religion clause is to guarantee religious freedom in the United States by requiring government neutrality toward religion. A state discriminating against religion — as Maine did in its tuition assistance program — is just as unconstitutional as a state promoting one particular religion.”
We are deeply concerned by yesterday's Supreme Court decision in #CarsonvMakin. While private religious education can be costly, this ruling weakens the core principle of church-state separation and could set a highly problematic precedent. https://t.co/IOOoupTmlE
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) June 22, 2022
With all respect to Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath Israel’s vice president for government affairs, this has nothing to do with any advocacy of the Agudah (all the good work they do notwithstanding).
ReplyDeleteThis is due directly to those who ignored askonim and ignored owners of mosdos who always instruct us to vote for the liberal in every single race and instead voted for the correct candidate, Donald Trump who put in proper justices.
May Hashem give us all the wisdom to continue to ignore these askonim and vote in a way that makes Hashem proud of us.