Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1195_g314.pdf
Page Number: 18.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

The  Department  argues  that  a  tradition  against  state 
support for religious schools arose in the second half of the
19th  century,  as  more  than  30  States—including  Mon-
tana—adopted  no-aid  provisions.  See  Brief  for  Respond-
ents 40–42 and App. D.  Such a development, of course, can-
not by itself establish an early American tradition.  JUSTICE 
SOTOMAYOR questions our reliance on aid provided during
the  same  era  by  the  Freedmen’s  Bureau,  post,  at  10  (dis-
senting opinion), but we see no inconsistency in recognizing
that such evidence may reinforce an early practice but can-
not create one.  In addition, many of the no-aid provisions 
belong to a more checkered tradition shared with the Blaine 
Amendment of the 1870s.  That proposal—which Congress
nearly passed—would have added to the Federal Constitu-
tion a provision similar to the state no-aid provisions, pro-
hibiting States from aiding “sectarian” schools.  See Mitch-
ell v. Helms, 530 U. S. 793, 828 (2000) (plurality opinion).
“[I]t was an open secret that ‘sectarian’ was code for ‘Cath-
olic.’ ”    Ibid.;  see  Jorgenson,  supra,  at  70.
  The  Blaine 
Amendment was “born of bigotry” and “arose at a time of 
pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics 

—————— 
he certainly does not identify a consistent early tradition, of the sort in-
voked in Locke, against support for religious schools.  Virginia’s opposi-
tion  to  establishing  university  theology  professorships  and  chartering 
theological seminaries, see ibid., do not fit the bill.  Buckley, After Dis-
establishment:  Thomas  Jefferson’s  Wall  of  Separation  in  Antebellum 
Virginia, 61 J. So. Hist. 445, 452–453 (1995).  JUSTICE BREYER also in-
vokes Madison’s objections to the Virginia Assessment Bill, post, at 8–9, 
but Madison objected in part because the Bill provided special support to
certain churches and clergy, thereby “violat[ing] equality by subjecting 
some to peculiar burdens.”  Memorial and Remonstrance Against Reli-
gious Assessments, Art. 4, reprinted in Everson, 330 U. S., at 66 (appen-
dix  to  dissenting  opinion  of  Rutledge,  J.);  see  V.  Muñoz,  God  and  the 
Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson 21–22, 27 (2009).  It is 
far from clear that the same objections extend to programs that provide
equal support to all private primary and secondary schools.  If anything, 
excluding religious schools from such programs would appear to impose
the “peculiar burdens” feared by Madison.