Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf
Page Number: 3

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

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Syllabus 

from  its  tuition  assistance  program  after  Zelman  thus  promotes
stricter separation of church and state than the Federal Constitution 
requires.  But a State’s antiestablishment interest does not justify en-
actments that exclude some members of the community from an oth-
erwise generally available public benefit because of their religious ex-
ercise.  Pp. 9–11.

(c) The  First  Circuit’s  attempts  to  recharacterize  the  nature  of 
Maine’s tuition assistance program do not suffice to distinguish this 
case from Trinity Lutheran or Espinoza.  Pp. 11–18. 

(1) The First Circuit held that the “nonsectarian” requirement was
constitutional because the benefit was properly viewed not as tuition 
payments to be used at approved private schools but instead as fund-
ing for the “rough equivalent of the public school education that Maine
may permissibly require to be secular.”  979 F. 3d 21, 44.  But the stat-
ute does not say anything like that.  The benefit provided by statute is
tuition  at  a  public  or  private  school,  selected  by  the  parent,  with  no 
suggestion that the “private school” must somehow provide a “public” 
education.  Moreover, the differences between private schools eligible
to receive tuition assistance under Maine’s program and a Maine pub-
lic school are numerous and important.  To start with, private schools 
do not have to accept all students, while public schools generally do. 
In addition, the free public education that Maine insists it is providing 
through the tuition assistance program is often not free, as some par-
ticipating private schools charge several times the maximum benefit 
that Maine is willing to provide.  And the curriculum taught at partic-
ipating  private  schools  need  not  even  resemble  that  taught  in  the 
Maine public schools.

The key manner in which participating private schools are required
to resemble Maine public schools, however, is that they must be secu-
lar.    Maine  may  provide  a  strictly  secular  education  in  its  public 
schools.  But BCS and Temple Academy—like numerous other recipi-
ents  of  Maine  tuition  assistance  payments—are  not  public  schools. 
Maine has chosen to offer tuition assistance that parents may direct to
the public or private schools of their choice.  Maine’s administration of 
that  benefit  is  subject  to  the  free  exercise  principles  governing  any
public benefit program—including the prohibition on denying the ben-
efit based on a recipient’s religious exercise.  Pp. 11–15.

(2) The Court of Appeals also attempted to distinguish this case from 
Trinity  Lutheran  and  Espinoza  on  the  ground  that  the  funding  re-
strictions in those cases were “solely status-based religious discrimi-
nation,” while the challenged provision here “imposes a use-based re-
striction.”    979  F. 3d,  at  35,  37–38.    Trinity  Lutheran  and  Espinoza
held that the Free Exercise Clause forbids discrimination on the basis 
of religious status.  But those decisions never suggested that use-based