Court Opinion

ID: 9439979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 07:04:22.450669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:53.218832
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that plaintiffs have not shown that Maine’s statute subsidizing attendance at non-sectarian private schools, in communities lacking public schools, is unconstitutional. But I see no need for this court to decide that a broader statute (i.e., one also subsidizing attendance at sectarian private schools) would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”).
For the reasons stated by my colleagues, supra, I agree that the Maine statute, as presently written, does not violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment nor principles of substantive due process.
My colleagues and I part company, however, in our analysis of plaintiffs’ establishment clause and equal protection clause claims. The Maine tuition statute was narrowed in 1981 to exclude religiously-affiliated schools in response to a decision of the Maine Attorney General concluding that the inclusion of religiously-affiliated schools in Maine’s tuition program violated the establishment clause of the federal Constitution. See Bagley, et al. v. Raymond School Department, 728 A.2d 127 (Me.1999). Last month, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld the continued constitutionality of the exclusion of sectarian schools, holding that to fund them would violate the establishment clause. My colleagues apparently believe, as did the Maine court, that since the Maine legislature excluded sectarian schools because of establishment clause concerns, the latter must be addressed by us the Maine court, indeed, suggested that if allowing tuition benefits to the sectarian schools would not violate the establishment clause, then denying such benefits would violate the equal protection clause, as denial would not then withstand even the minimal, “rational basis,” scrutiny under the Constitution’s equal protection clause.13 In such event, plaintiffs would have succeeded in demonstrating that the current statute is unconstitutional, being violative of the equal protection clause.
*67While I understand the above rationale, I think it goes further than necessary. I prefer not to render an opinion based on speculation as to the constitutionality of a statute different from the one under discussion. Contrary to what my colleagues seem to suggest, supra, ours is not a ease that involves the “imbroglio” of direct subsidies paid to sectarian schools. Rather, the Maine legislature, acting on the basis of an opinion issued by its Attorney General, has expressly excluded sectarian schools from the possibility of receiving subsidies. The question is whether the current statute is unconstitutional, not whether a more inclusive one would be.
Plaintiffs argue that various constitutional provisions, including, oddly, the establishment clause itself, are offended by denying tuition benefits to sectarian schools. But none of plaintiffs’ theories of unconstitutionality work. The establishment clause certainly provides plaintiffs with no affirmative basis for requiring the funding of sectarian schools, for reasons well explained by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in its recent decision, 728 A.2d at 134-35, and by my colleagues.
Because plaintiffs’ attempt to use the establishment clause as a sword fails, and because the Maine statute does not, for the reasons stated by my colleagues, violate the free exercise clause, no fundamental right is implicated here for equal protection purposes. Thus, the proper level of scrutiny under the equal protection clause is the most deferential — rational basis review. See Johnson v. Robison, 415 U.S. 361, 375 n. 14, 94 S.Ct. 1160, 39 L.Ed.2d 389 (1974) (where Act did not violate ap-pellee’s right of free exercise of religion, court has no occasion to apply a standard of scrutiny stricter than rational basis test); see also Griffin High School v. Illinois High School Ass’n, 822 F.2d 671, 674 (7th Cir.1987).
In my view, plaintiffs’ equal protection clause claim fails not because, as my colleagues conclude, the Maine Attorney General’s ‘opinion relied upon by the legislature was necessarily correct that including sectarian schools would or might violate the establishment clause, hence was better left alone. Rather, the action of the Maine legislature need only be supported by a rational basis, not one that turns out to be correct on the merits. Rational basis review is “a paradigm of judicial restraint” ... and “[w]here there are ‘plausible reasons’ for [the action of the legislature], ‘our inquiry is at an end.’ ” FCC v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 314, 113 S.Ct. 2096, 124 L.Ed.2d 211 (1993)(quoting United States R.R. Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166, 179, 101 S.Ct. 453, 66 L.Ed.2d 368 (1980)). See also Western & Southern Life Ins. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization, 451 U.S. 648, 672, 101 S.Ct. 2070, 68 L.Ed.2d 514 (1981) (“the Equal Protection Clause is satisfied if we conclude that the California Legislature rationally could have believed” that the measure promoted its objectives) (emphasis in original).
The Maine legislature rationally could have believed that including sectarian schools within its funding scheme would or might violate the establishment clause, hence was better left alone. Several opinions of the United States Supreme Court cited by my colleagues and by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court undoubtedly lend support to such a viewpoint. See, e.g., Committee for Pub. Educ. & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 93 S.Ct. 2955, 37 L.Ed.2d 948 (1973). These precedents are not conclusive, however, and many commentators interpret the more recent cases as indicating that the Supreme Court will uphold state tuition schemes that provide funding to sectarian as well as non-sectarian schools. The fact is that establishment clause jurisprudence as applied to this particular area is so unclear today that no court other than the Supreme Court can reliably resolve whether a statutory scheme like Maine’s would violate the establishment clause were it to fund sectarian as well as non-sectarian schools. In spite of this uncertainty, how*68ever, the Maine legislature’s fear, based on its Attorney General’s analysis, that including sectarian schools would violate the establishment clause was and remains entirely rational. While the odds were perhaps stronger in 1981 than they are today, existing case law still provides a reasonable basis for legislative refusal to extend tuition grants to sectarian schools. I see the Maine legislature, in 1981 and to this moment, as having rationally and prudently excluded sectarian schools because of a well-founded concern — whether or not ultimately correct — that to do otherwise will or may violate the establishment clause. The existence of that fear is rational enough, I think, to meet equal protection (and free exercise) requirements, however defined.
This is not to say that the Supreme Court may not someday decide that inclusion of sectarian schools in a scheme like this is permissible under the establishment clause. A strong argument can be made to that effect. Were the Supreme Court to so rule, plaintiffs might then be in a position to seek relief on free exercise or equal protection grounds, for under those circumstances the legislative basis for the exclusion of sectarian schools — the fear that the establishment clause bars their inclusion — will have been negated. But in today’s climate, lacking further Supreme Court enlightenment, plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that the Maine statute violates any provision of the Constitution. Accordingly, I agree that we should affirm the judgment of the district court, but— like that court — -I see no need whatever to reach out and decide the thorny establishment clause issue — an issue that, as my colleagues also recognize, can be meaningfully resolved only by the Supreme Court itself.

. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court actually believed that strict scrutiny was called for, religion being a fundamental right, but that even under a rational basis standard the exclusion of religious schools would violate equal protection (assuming no establishment clause bar) because of the irrationality of denying them tuition benefits if the legislature’s sole apparent reason for denial was legally incorrect.