Espinoza v. Montana - Supreme Court Strikes Down State Bans on Religious School Funding

On June 30, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that states cannot exclude religious schools from programs that provide public funding to private schools, striking down Montana’s “Blaine Amendment” and similar provisions in 37 state constitutions that had barred public funding of religious education. Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion held that such exclusions violate the Free Exercise Clause, removing the last major constitutional barrier to public funding of religious schools.

Montana had created a tax-credit scholarship program allowing donors to receive tax credits for contributions to private school scholarships. The Montana Supreme Court struck down the program entirely because it could not exclude religious schools under the state constitution’s prohibition on aid to religious institutions. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that once a state creates a program benefiting private schools, it cannot discriminate against religious schools.

The decision extended the Court’s 2017 ruling in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, which had held that excluding religious organizations from a playground resurfacing grant program violated the Free Exercise Clause. Roberts emphasized that the Montana program discriminated based on the “religious character” of schools, triggering strict scrutiny that the state’s interest in separating church and state could not satisfy.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent warned that the majority was “leading us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation” and that the decision “weakens this country’s longstanding commitment to a separation of church and state beneficial to both.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Sotomayor in arguing that the majority had effectively created a constitutional right to public funding for religious education.

Espinoza represented a major victory for school choice advocates and religious organizations that had spent decades challenging Blaine Amendments. The Institute for Justice, which litigated the case, and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty had systematically built precedent toward this outcome. Combined with Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the decision meant that not only were vouchers for religious schools constitutionally permissible, but states that created school choice programs could not exclude religious schools. The ruling opened the floodgates for universal voucher programs in Republican-controlled states, with billions of public education dollars now flowing to religious institutions teaching curricula that often conflict with scientific consensus and civil rights principles.