Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf
Page Number: 30

8 

CARSON v. MAKIN 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

resurfacing school playgrounds to make them safer for chil-
dren.  Any  Establishment  Clause  concerns  arising  from
providing money to religious schools for the creation of safer 
play yards are readily distinguishable from those raised by 
providing money to religious schools through the program
at issue here—a tuition program designed to ensure that all 
children receive their constitutionally guaranteed right to 
a free public education.  After all, cities and States normally 
pay for police forces, fire protection, paved streets, munici-
pal  transport,  and  hosts  of  other  services  that  benefit 
churches as well as secular organizations.  But paying the 
salary of a religious teacher as part of a public school tuition 
program is a different matter.

In addition, schools were excluded from the playground
resurfacing program at issue in Trinity Lutheran because 
of the mere fact that they were “owned or controlled by a 
church,  sect,  or  other  religious  entity.”    582  U. S.,  at  ___ 
(slip op., at 2).  Schools were thus disqualified from receiv-
ing playground funds “solely because of their religious char-
acter,” not because of the “religious uses of [the] funding” 
they would receive.  Id., at ___, ___, n. 3 (slip op., at 10, 14, 
n. 3).  Here, by contrast, a school’s “ ‘affiliation or associa-
tion with a church or religious institution . . . is not dispos-
itive’ ” of its ability to receive tuition funds.  979 F. 3d 21, 
38 (CA1 2020) (quoting then-commissioner of Maine’s De-
partment of Education).  Instead, Maine chooses not to fund 
only those schools that “ ‘promot[e] the faith or belief system 
with which [the schools are] associated and/or presen[t] the
[academic]  material  taught  through  the  lens  of  this 
faith’ ”—i.e., schools that will use public money for religious 
purposes.  Ibid.  Maine thus excludes schools from its tui-
tion program not because of the schools’ religious character 
but because the schools will use the funds to teach and pro-
mote religious ideals.

For  similar  reasons,  Espinoza  does  not  resolve  the  pre-
sent  case.  In  Espinoza,  Montana  created  “a  scholarship