Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1195_g314.pdf
Page Number: 41

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

7 

ALITO, J., concurring 

of systems of public schools . . . free from sectarian control.” 
Act of Feb. 22, 1889, §4, 25 Stat. 677; see also Becket Fund
Brief 17–18 (quoting one Senator’s description of the Act as
“ ‘completing  the  unfinished  work  of  the  failed  Blaine 
Amendment’ ”).    Montana  thereafter  adopted  its  constitu-
tional  rule  against  public  funding  for  any  school  “con-
trolled” by a “sect.”  Mont. Const., Art. XI, §8 (1889).  There 
appears to have been no doubt which schools that meant.
As  petitioners  show,  Montana’s  religious  schools—and  its 
private  schools  in  general—were  predominantly  Catholic, 
see Brief for Petitioners 42, and n. 41, and anti-Catholicism 
was alive in Montana too.  See, e.g., Sen. Daines Brief 1–3 
(describing  a  riot  over  an  anti-Catholic  sign  hung  over  a 
Butte saloon on Independence Day, 1894).

Respondents  argue  that  Montana’s  no-aid  provision
merely reflects a state interest in “preserv[ing] funding for 
public schools,” Brief for Respondents 7, known as “common 
schools” during the Blaine era.  Yet just as one cannot sep-
arate the Blaine Amendment from its context, “[o]ne cannot 
separate the founding of the American common school and 
the strong nativist movement.”9 

Spearheaded  by  Horace  Mann,  Secretary  of  the  Massa-
chusetts  Board  of  Education  from  1837  to  1848,  the 
common-school movement did not aim to establish a system 
that was scrupulously neutral on matters of religion.  (In a
country like ours, that would have been exceedingly diffi-
cult, if not impossible.)  Instead the aim was to establish a 
system  that  would  inculcate  a  form  of  “least-common- 
denominator Protestantism.”10  This was accomplished with 

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9 Viteritti,  Blaine’s  Wake:  School  Choice,  the  First  Amendment,  and 
State  Constitutional  Law,  21  Harv.  J.  L.  &  Pub.  Pol’y  657,  667  (1998) 
(Viteritti, Blaine’s Wake). 

10 Jeffries & Ryan, A Political History of the Establishment Clause, 100 
Mich. L. Rev. 279, 298 (2001) (Jeffries & Ryan); see also, e.g., CER Brief 
23–26.