Source: https://www.modrall.com/2018/05/30/religious-freedom-v-the-blaine-amendment-current-challenges-to-a-discriminatory-remnant-of-the-nineteenth-century/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 08:43:16+00:00

Document:
New Mexico’s Blaine Amendment – Article XII, Section 3 of the New Mexico Constitution – provides that no funds “appropriated, levied or collected for educational purposes, shall be used for the support of any sectarian, denominational or private school, college or university.”6 Under this provision, a suit was filed against the Secretary of the New Mexico Public Education Department in Moses v. Skandera to challenge New Mexico’s Instructional Materials Law (“IML”), which makes secular textbooks and other educational materials available to all New Mexico students, regardless of where they attend school.7 The IML has a history older than the state itself, beginning with pre-statehood efforts to raise the literacy rate across the then-Territory. The current version of the law is designed to directly assist all students at private or public schools and helps many of the poorest students gain equal access to quality educational materials.
The Association filed a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, on the question of whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution prohibited application of the Blaine Amendment to invalidate the textbook lending provision of the IML. The U.S. Supreme Court held the petition pending a decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, where the Court was considering Missouri’s denial of playground resurfacing funds to a church for its church-run preschool.
The day after Trinity Lutheran was decided, the United States Supreme Court granted the Association’s petition, vacated the New Mexico Supreme Court’s ruling, and remanded to the New Mexico Supreme Court for further consideration. The intervenors and defendant are encouraging the New Mexico Supreme Court to reconsider its analysis and uphold the IML’s provision of textbooks for all New Mexico students, regardless of where they may choose to receive their education. This corrective ruling is required by the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses of the United States Constitution, and the Equal Protection Clause of the New Mexico Constitution, and is essential to protecting against the invidious religious bigotry lurking within the Blaine Amendment. A decision is expected in 2018.
It is no mystery that Blaine Amendments are designed to discriminate. The New Mexico Supreme Court has acknowledged the anti-Catholic origins of provisions barring aid to “sectarian” institutions; they arose in response to Catholic opposition to the Protestant-run common schools, which were “‘designed to function as an instrument for the acculturation of immigrant [Catholic] populations, rendering them good productive citizens in the image of the ruling [Protestant] majority.’”17 Trinity Lutheran caps this analysis by affirming that laws targeting religious individuals or organizations for disfavored treatment are barred by the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses of the United States Constitution. Such laws are equally “odious” whether they discriminate among religions or against religion generally. The New Mexico Blaine Amendment does both by targeting Catholic schools specifically and all religious schools generally.
Trinity Lutheran requires the New Mexico Supreme Court to invalidate the Blaine Amendment. The bar on aid to “sectarian” schools is plainly unconstitutional, and the prophylactic bar on aid to “private” schools is an inadequate cure. Such a provision could stand only if re-enacted independent of the bigotry that surrounded enactment of the Blaine Amendment, and without the current language that explicitly identifies “sectarian” schools for disfavored treatment. Alternatively, the Blaine Amendment could be narrowly construed by ruling that it is not implicated by aid directed to students not schools, thereby avoiding conflict with the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses. This construction could be easily implemented because the IML and its predecessor statutes protecting textbooks to students have long been a part of New Mexico’s law, including versions enacted around the time of New Mexico’s constitutional convention. As in Trinity Lutheran, any benefit to religious or other private schools is purely incidental to the State’s legitimate effort to benefit all students. Upholding the IML would both fit New Mexico history and honor the New Mexico Legislature’s efforts to give all New Mexico children equal access to a quality education.
R. E. Thompson is a Shareholder at Modrall Sperling in New Mexico.
2 Moses v. Skandera, 2015-NMSC-036, ¶ 21, 367 P.3d 838, vacated, 137 S. Ct. 2325 (2017) (quoting Joseph P. Viteritti, Blaine’s Wake: School Choice, The First Amendment, and State Constitutional Law, 21 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 657, 670 (1998)).
3 Id. ¶ 23 (quoting Viteritti, 21 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y at 673).
4 Id. ¶ 24; see also Enabling Act for New Mexico of June 20, 1910, 36 Stat. 557, ch. 310, § 8.
5 Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 579 (1993) (Blackmun, J., concurring).
6 N.M. Const. Art. XII, § 3.
7 Moses v. Skandera, NMSA 1978, §§ 22-15-1 to 22-15-14.
8 Moses v. Skandera, 2015-NMCA-036, ¶ 39, 346 P.3d 396 (2014).
12 137 S. Ct. 2012, 2024-25 (2017).
13 Id. at 2019 (quotation marks, citations, alterations omitted).
14 Id. (quotation marks and citations omitted).
16 Id. at 2019, 2021, 2044 (quotation marks and citations omitted).
17 2015-NMSC-036, ¶ 19 (quoting Viteritti, 21 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y at 668).
18 See, e.g., Lukumi, 508 U.S. at 547.
19 See Hunter v. Thompson, 471 U.S. 222, 228 (1985).

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