New Article: Michael Bindas, The Once and Future Promise of Religious Schools for Poor and Minority Students, 132 (Forum) Yale Law Journal (2022). Abstract below:
In Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court provided the bookend to its 2002 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. Whereas Zelman held that the Establishment Clause permits the inclusion of religious options in educational-choice programs, Carson held that the Free Exercise prohibits their exclusion. Immediately, the public-school establishment decried the decision as a threat to the public-school system, predicting that it would exacerbate inequalities for poor and minority students and even lead to re-segregation. This Essay responds to those claims. It discusses religious schools’ long history of providing educational opportunity to the most disadvantaged and marginalized students, the public-school establishment’s similarly long history of opposing the opportunity that religious schools have provided those students, and the public-school establishment’s complicity in causing, through residence-based school assignment, the very inequalities that have led such students to seek educational opportunity outside the public schools. The Essay concludes by calling on the establishment to end its hostility to religious schools and abolish its own practice of assigning students to public schools based on residence. Carson presents a chance to pursue a new and truly pluralistic approach to education, one that affords opportunity in all types of schools, whether public or private, religious or nonreligious. The public-school establishment should embrace that possibility if it is truly concerned for the interests of the students it purports to serve.
Poverty Law 