Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1195_g314.pdf
Page Number: 44.0

10 

ESPINOZA v. MONTANA DEPT. OF REVENUE 

ALITO, J., concurring 

In 1854, the Know Nothing party, in many ways a forerun-
ner of the Ku Klux Klan,17 took control of the legislature in 
Mann’s State of Massachusetts and championed one of the 
first constitutional bans on aid to “sectarian” schools (along
with attempting to limit the franchise to native-born peo-
ple).  See Viteritti, Blaine’s Wake 669–670. 

Respondents  and  one  dissent  argue  that  Montana’s  no-
aid provision was cleansed of its bigoted past because it was 
readopted for non-bigoted reasons in Montana’s 1972 con-
stitutional  convention.  See  post,  at  4–5,  n. 2  (opinion  of 
SOTOMAYOR,  J.);  see  also  Brief  for  Respondents  18;  Tr.  of 
Oral Arg. 22–23.  They emphasize that the convention in-
cluded Catholics, just as the constitutional convention that 
readopted  Louisiana’s  purportedly  racist  non-unanimous
jury provision included black delegates.  As noted, a virtu-
ally identical argument was rejected in Ramos, even though
“ ‘no mention was made of race’ ” during the Louisiana con-
vention  debates.    590  U. S.,  at  ___  (ALITO,  J.,  dissenting) 
(slip op., at 3) (quoting State v. Hankton, 2012–0375, p. 19
(La. App. 4 Cir. 8/2/13), 122 So. 3d 1028, 1038).  Under Ra-
mos, it emphatically does not matter whether Montana re-
adopted the no-aid provision for benign reasons.  The pro-
vision’s  “uncomfortable  past”  must  still  be  “[e]xamined.”
590 U. S., at ___, n. 44 (opinion of the Court) (slip op., at 14, 
n. 44).  And  here,  it  is  not  so  clear  that  the  animus  was 
scrubbed. 

Delegates at Montana’s constitutional convention in 1972 
acknowledged that the no-aid provision was “a badge of big-
otry,” with one Catholic delegate recalling “being let out of 
school in the fourth grade to erase three ‘Ks’ on the front 
doors of the Catholic church in Billings.”18  Nevertheless the 

—————— 

17 See generally Myers, Know Nothing and Ku Klux Klan, 219 North 

American Rev. 1 (Jan. 1924). 

18 6 Montana Constitutional Convention 1971–1972, Proceedings and