Posted on 12/31/2015 10:21:15 PM PST by Morgana
Critics consider Blaine amendments anti-Catholic relics of the past
HELENA, Mont. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Three women are suing the state of Montana over an anti-Catholic provision in the state constitution. Called a Blaine amendment, the provision is being used to deny tax credits to any religiously affiliated schools.
A state initiative implemented in May provides a $150-tax credit to people or groups that donate money toward student scholarships. But according to the Montana Department of Revenue, tax credits may not be applied to people who donate scholarship money that goes towards private religious schools because of a constitutional provision prohibiting it.
The relevant section in the Montana constitution reads:
AID PROHIBITED TO SECTARIAN SCHOOLS. (1) The legislature, counties, cities, towns, school districts, and public corporations shall not make any direct or indirect appropriation or payment from any public fund or monies, or any grant of lands or other property for any sectarian purpose or to aid any church, school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.
The non-profit Institute for Justice filed suit against the Montana Department of Revenue on behalf of three mothers, claiming the law discriminates on the basis of religion. Dick Komer, an attorney at the Institute, argues, "The Department of Revenue does not have the authority to exclude families who want to send their children to religious school under the program."
In a December 17 press release, the Institute stated, "Worse still, Article X, Section 6(1) is a state 'Blaine Amendment,' adopted in 1889 to discriminate against Catholics at a time of widespread Catholic bigotry. Today, the Department uses a provision designed to discriminate against Catholics to discriminate against all religions."
Blaine amendments are currently in force in 37 state constitutions, and are named after James G. Blaine, speaker of the U.S House of Representatives in 1875, who tried unsuccessfully three times for a presidential bid. American politics and social life were rife with Nativist sentiment, including strong anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant leanings, in the 19th century. The predominantly protestant government opposed "sectarian" (code word for "Catholic") schools, because of fears that such schools would not integrate their mostly German and Irish Catholic population.
Political leader Horace Mann, who also happened to be a Presbyterian minister, set about establishing public, government-run schools in the 1840s that would focus on a more protestantized curriculum: The school day would begin with Protestant prayers and hymns, and primary and secondary students would be required to do regular reading of the King James Bible as well as use McGuffey Readers, textbooks interspersed with anti-Catholic slurs like "papist" and "popery." The original Reader even included the false statement: "The account of his [Martin Luther's] death filled the Roman Catholic party with excessive as well as indecent joy."
Catholic teachers at such schools who refused to participate in reading the King James Bible were dismissed, while Catholic students were harassed and persecuted. A number of Catholics, led by Bp. Francis Kendrick, fought for reform in government-run schools, but faced strong public opposition in the form of protestant sermons and anti-Catholic tracts and posters denouncing Catholicism. Tensions exploded on May 3, 1844, when a riot broke out in Philadelphia and nativists destroyed dozens of homes of Irish Catholic immigrants and burned Catholic churches and schools to the ground. Such riots had, in fact, taken place in various pockets across the nation since the 1830s, although the 1844 incident was considered the most severe.
In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant made a public speech proposing a constitutional amendment that would deny federal funding to "sectarian schools" while promoting "good common school education" based on a more secularized, protestantized curriculum. It was against this backdrop of nativist sentiment that James Blaine proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting funds to Catholic institutions:
No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.
It passed overwhelmingly in the House by 180 votes to seven, but failed by four votes in the Senate.
Even so, numerous states went on to adopt "Blaine amendments" in their state constitutions. Today 37 state constitutions still have Blaine amendments, which are being used more broadly to deny federal funds not just to Catholic schools, but to schools of any religious affiliation.
There is a possibility Blaine amendments may be seeing their final days, however, as several cases are currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging one state's Blaine amendment. In Colorado, a school voucher program that applies equally to public and private religious schools has been struck down repeatedly, with the state's Blaine amendment being used as justification. As the High Court has upheld similar school voucher programs in the past, petitioners' hopes are high that the Colorado voucher program will be upheld — and the Blaine amendment, born of early American anti-Catholic bigotry, will receive its final death knell.
But in 1947, the Supreme Court, though an opinion by Justice Black, a formal member of the KKK, read the Blaine Amendment into the US constitution.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS!!!!
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Lawmakers who drafted the law and voted for it clearly intended the tax credit to be available for donations to groups that support children attending private, faith-based schools, Greenwood added.
Kadas said it doesn’t matter what legislators intended, if that intent violates the constitution.
He also said he expects either the rules or the law to end up in court.
The Revenue Department will consider public comments on the rule before adopting it, probably before the end of the year, Kadas said.
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