Friend-of-Cato and 2010 Milton Friedman Prize Dinner keynote speaker George Will published an excellent column today about a case under review at the Supreme Court, Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn:
The case concerns an Arizona school choice program that has been serving low- and middle-income families for 13 years. The state grants a tax credit to individuals who donate to nonprofit entities that award scholarships for children to attend private schools — including religious schools. Yes, here we go again.
The question — if a question that has been redundantly answered remains a real question — is whether this violates the First Amendment proscription of any measure amounting to government “establishment of religion.” The incorrigible 9th Circuit has declared Arizona’s program unconstitutional, even though there is no government involvement in any parent’s decision to use a scholarship at a religious school.
If this case hadn’t originated in a state within the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, nobody would have heard about it because any other federal appellate court would probably have decided it correctly. Will correctly and convincingly argues for summary reversal — as our friends at the Institute for Justice, who represent the petitioners, request — because the Ninth Circuit’s decision ignores clear Supreme Court precedent allowing parents to choose how to direct state funds for their children’s education (to a sectarian school or otherwise):
So, [Chief Justice William] Rehnquist wrote [in 2002], public money “reaches religious schools only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals.” Therefore any “advancement of a religious mission” is merely “incidental” and confers “no imprimatur of state approval … on any particular religion, or on religion generally.” These standards had been developed in various prior cases.
Cato filed a brief in this case that I previously blogged about. And you can listen to Will’s Friedman Dinner address here. (Unrelatedly, if you still haven’t read his masterful Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball – which has sold many more copies than any of his political books — pick up the re-issued twentieth anniversary edition.)
