RT Article
T1 Espinoza, Government Funding, and Religious Choice
JF Journal of law and religion
VO 35
IS 3
SP 361
OP 379
A1 Berg, Thomas C. 1960-
A1 Laycock, Douglas
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1752581709
AB The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, holding that religious schools cannot be excluded from a state program of financial aid to private schools, is another incremental step in the Court's long-running project to reform the constitutional law of financial aid to religious institutions. There was nothing surprising about the decision, and it changed little; it was the inevitable next link in a long chain of decisions. To those observers still attached to the most expansive rhetoric of no-aid separationism, it is the world turned upside down. But the Court has been steadily marching away from that rhetoric for thirty-five years now. The more recent decisions, including Espinoza, do a far better job than no-aid separationism of separating the religious choices and commitments of the American people from the coercive power of the government. And that is the separation that is and should be the ultimate concern of the Religion Clauses - to minimize the government's interference with or influence on religion, and to leave each American free to exercise or reject religion in his or her own way, neither encouraged by the government nor discouraged or penalized by the government.
K1 category neutrality
K1 Establishment of religion
K1 formal neutrality
K1 free exercise of religion
K1 government funding of religion
K1 incentive neutrality
K1 neutral categories
K1 neutral incentives
K1 neutrality toward religion
K1 religious choices
K1 religious exemptions
K1 Religious schools
K1 school vouchers
K1 substantive neutrality
DO 10.1017/jlr.2020.40