CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is praising the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear a case involving religious liberty and the use of public funds for private schools.
On July 2, the Supreme Court said it would hear a Maine case brought by families who want to use a state tuition program to send children to religious schools. The program currently excludes religious schools, and the families were defeated in lower federal courts before it was appealed to the Supreme Court.
Morrisey joined an 18-state coalition in March asking the court to hear the case.
Morrisey
“This is an important victory for religious liberty and school choice,” Morrisey said. “Public funding for private education should be distributed on an equal basis. The same money available to nonreligious schools should also be accessible to religious schools.
“We look forward to the case being argued and the court’s eventual decision.”
Morrisey’s office says many of the states that joined the brief partner with private schools to empower parents to make the educational choices they think best fit their families. The details of these partnerships vary, but the states do not condition a school’s participation on its religiousness.
Likewise, Morrisey’s office says the coalition states are united in recognizing religious and nonreligious schools as valid educational partners. It says the coalition contends that openness to partnering with religious schools furthers their states’ goal of providing an array of education choices. It also protects their citizens’ constitutional rights.
West Virginia was part of the Arkansas-led brief with Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.