Vouchers is the name and school choices the game. There are more lawsuits of Bruin and Scott has the story Scott Well.
We have a pair of articles about efforts for and against school voucher programs. First, from Maine, Crosspoint Church is appealing a ruling that requires religious schools in state tuition program to comply with the state's anti discrimination law, which protects LGBTQ students and staff. This follows the Supreme Court decision that allowed religious schools to participate in the program in the first place. The church argues that Maine lawmakers
are targeting religious institutions by enforcing the law. Another similar lawsuit involves the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. Both cases are being appealed after federal judge's ruling, which may be reviewed by a higher court. Next, we go to Nebraska. The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that a ballot measure to repeal a law providing taxpayer funded private school tuition can appear on the November ballot. The court rejected claims that
the measure illegally targeted a government of propreation. Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Envin Evnin Bob Evnin had initially certified the repeal, but later claimed it was a mistake and sought to withdraw his certification. The court disagreed, stating that once certified, the measure could not be revoked. Public school advocates who gathered signatures for the repeal praised the decision, while school choice proponents are preparing to campaign against it.
These articles are from National Catholic Reporter by Religion News Service on September tenth, twenty twenty four, and AP News by Marjorie A. Beck on September thirteenth, twenty twenty four.
Thank you, Scott, and I have my first question for you, all right, So, how do differing interpretations of the law reflect broader societal tensions between religious freedom and anti discrimination protections.
Well, I think what we're seeing here is just that I think we're seeing different interpretations of the law by the same kinds of bodies that had different opinions before. We see that there's a shift happening here. There's a change. Most notice noticeably, the change is happening in the Supreme Court. A few years ago, we wouldn't expect court, the Supreme Court to be supporting uh funneling public funds to private
education institutions. But apparently that that's okay now, And so I don't want to say it's unconstitutional per se, because technically the Supreme Court it's their job to interpret the Constitution. So technically what they're doing is correct constitutionally by definition. Now, you could argue that they're going against past history, which I think is what's happening here. We're seeing that that there's this conflict. So we have the group that want
to discriminate basically, which which to me is is baffling. Here, I want to read a quote on that note here, and I know I'm getting sidetracks within sidetracks here, but this is here's what they said in the article. An attorney for Cross Point Church in Bangor accused main lawmakers of apply eying the anti discrimination lot to create a barrier for religious schools. After the hard fought Supreme Court victory.
The main legislature largely deprived this is a quote. The main legislature largely deprived the client of the fruits of their victory by amending the law, said David hack Hacker from the First Liberty Institute, which filed the appeal this week to the First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Here's the stinger. Here, it's engineered to target a specific
religious group. That's unconstitutional. And so, going back to what you were asking about the tensions between religious freedom and the anti discrimination protections, here we have religious groups that are specifically saying, if you tell me I can't discriminate, that's going against my religion.
I mean, that is just a that is literally saying the quiet.
Part out loud.
I mean, you couldn't have much of a bigger admission than that. They're saying. Nobody said anything about Christianity. No, it was about discrimination. If you accept these funds, you can't discriminate. Wait a minute, why are you picking on Christians like that?
Whoops?
Say there.
I mean, it's definitely characteristic of the types of things that we cover very often on the nonprofits and it perfectly illustrates that tension that you're talking about. We have religious groups that want to be free to discriminate because of their religion, and then we have the government whose job, in theory at least, is to protect the rights of everybody from being discriminated against. And so you know, it's I don't think it's going to be going and anytime soon.
But I'm not surprised that we have so many stories like this on just this topic.
You know, it's so interesting, And then AJM want to bring you into it, because like this is just nothing but a circulation of history. If you guys remember, you know, for those of you all who may be out there in Internet land who are old enough to remember that Liberty University and Bob Jones University were told specifically and they lost the Supreme Court case back in this say that said that if you want to receive government funds, you cannot discriminate against who you could have coming to
your school. And at that time they were actively keeping out black students from their schools. I would love to ask the black students at the time who applied to go to Bob Jones University and Liberty University, what the fuck is wrong with you? But I digress. They said to them, hey, you cannot discriminate your emissions, so you have to or let them in if you want to get funds, right, and they reluctantly did it. And then then they changed their politics to be, you know, against abortion,
which historically they weren't. Just the way they can rally the right. But you know, that's a different story and it's a different topic. So but I found it like so ironic that religious institutions like Liberty University, like Bob Jones University, it's basically doing the same damn thing all over again in twenty twenty four. I mean, o MG. But this is my issue, and this is what I'm concerned about. And then, AG, I want you to respond.
My concern is that now the target is LGBTQI plus people, and the argument could be, of course, we can discriminate against the LGBTQ community because their mere existence is sinful. God doesn't like these people, therefore we don't like these people, and therefore we can discriminate. AJ Now that I have brought that up, what are your.
Thoughts, Scott said? He said he was not surprised, and here I am why am I not surprised that a religious organization is asking basically for permission to be hateful. Two of the schools involved in the lawsuit in Maine, Cross Point Church and Saint Dominic's Academy, which is a Catholic church. I tend to not follow these anti excuminatory laws, and this allows a qual any school participating in the tuition program religious or not to buide by the main
Human Rights Act. This Act includes protections for LGBTQ students and faculty, so it goes for both all of the students and the people that were there, the teachers, the janitor, anybody.
But so right here, these are protections for gender identity, for example, for expression, for sexual orientation, and they're also made it illegal for these types of schools or institutions to force students into conversion therapy, which was only banned very recently in twenty nineteen in Maine, and there are still twenty states in the United States that allow conversion therapy,
including Oklahoma, Nebraska, Louisiana, and Texas. Right, and these kinds of school want to be able to use public school funds and they want to draw them for the vultures and then do eaching programs, all the while discriminating freely against LGBTQ people the same way that they discriminated back then against black people.
You know, I would just want to tell these people like listen, yeah, go ahead to discriminate all you want, but you can't use taxpayer moneys in order for you to fund to run.
Teams obvious, yeah, forward, Yeah.
Yeah, I mean like it was the same way with Liberty University and Bob Jones University, Like, hey, if you don't want to let black people in, you can't get fundled, you can't get federal funding, right yeah, And it's the same way with these particular schools, like listen, if you want to take advantage of getting state state funding in order for you to operate, then you can't discriminate. If you want to discriminate, then do it on your own dine, don't do it on ours.
Right yeah. Yeah.
And it's not just uh, you know, racial issues too, there's also LGBTQ issues as you mentioned, but also on hiring practices too. You know, if if they accept, if they accept these monies, then they not only have a responsibility to their students, but also to their faculty and staff. And so that's been a that's been a rubbing point as well. And so yeah, it it boils down to this. You know, we want religious freedom, and that means we also want to be able to break these other laws
about discrimination. And you know it's really it's really uh an offensive privileged position, and it's it's surprising to me it's not surprising that they're doing it, but it's surprising to me that they are able to uh say these kind of things out in public in front of people, and uh yeah and there, and they're they're expecting to be respected for that, like they're like they're sticking with their religious guns here, and it's it's, I don't know,
it's really appalling. If it's just another example of where where's the harm and religion? If if you know, if it takes if good people do good things and bad people do bad thing, but it takes religious something like religion to make good people do bad things. Here's some good people doing presumably doing some bad things, and it's because of this, I mean, it's I don't know. I almost want to just say, I'm not going to comment.
You can keep talking, because you're making my case for me kind of a thing.
Yeah, exactly, Like you know, the more that you actually keep using these hateful narratives in order for you to push your point, the more that you are look, you know, making our argument work for.
Us, exactly. Yeah.
But I want to ask you both, what do you think or how do you think the personal stories like those families involved in these lawsuits are shaping or can shape public opinion. Ag I want you to chime in on that, and then Scott, I want you to reply.
So, I think these stories actually shape both sides. They can shape this side of religious people where they feel more empowered to come out and say all these hateful things and to demand to continue to demand unreasonable rewards. I guess you could say with the tuition programs, because they think that no matter what rules they said, they
still should be able to get the benefits. And at the same time, it brings light to all this hatefulness, and it allows people to realize how harmful this is becoming, and how we cannot allow all these religious organizations to draw from public funding that could go to public schools and use it for their indoctrination purposes.
Scrit what about you? What do you think? How?
I think AJ nailed it right there.
I think that personal stories added an element to the to the data. Really, you know, we as human beings were very storytelling oriented. We try to describe things using stories. Our memory works based on storytelling associations, and so hearing a story of real harm that's being caused by these policies can have a huge impact on somebody.
As as a statistics teacher, I also.
Worry about having individual stories have too having too much of an impact, right we say we often say that anecdotes, the plural of anecdotes is not data. And so I think we just lost Cynthia. So we'll just keep talking until we get her back here. But but so having these personal stories too for for people to latch on
can make a big difference here. And I want to point out something that that I saw in the Nebraska in the story on the Nebraska a ballot initiative AJ and then maybe you can you can comment on what I saw here.
But I mean, not only are we uh.
Is it is it this being harmful to people, but it's really undermining the the voice of the public. Right, It's really I mean, we have this this what was he Secretary of State? Right not only does he want to uh support these school voucher programs, but he also wants to keep the public from airing their opinion on it. And and that's really what what the ballot initiative was for.
And so Cynthia, we went on to another question while you.
Were away, So I hope we can reconnect here when when I'm done with this. But but yeah, so, I mean, I I read when I was doing my research for this, I came across a claim in Forbes magazine, and I couldn't verify this, so I'm just offering it for food for thought.
But their claim was that no.
Voucher proposal has ever survived a direct vote by a state's taxpayers. And whether or not that's true, that's certainly what's what's happening here is that there's a clear majority among the taxpayers that want this thing repealed. They they they had a certain amount of thousands of signatures that they needed, and they went several thousand beyond that, and so there's this massive upwelling of support for for repealing this, uh, this law that allows Nebraska to funnel money into private
religious organizations. But it's just really underhanded the way this Secretary of State is approaching this. He's he's literally trying to shut the public up when his job is the exact opposite of that.
Sorry, Cynthia, You're you're You're totally fine, because that was actually where I was heading to, is about the referrera.
Right, Yeah, we're we're here.
Yeah.
The first question on the Nebraska.
Yeah, yeah, Glenn added all of this anyway, Oh yes, but yeah, but I I but I did want.
To talk a little bit more about the referendum because, like, you know, I'm thinking that that in my head if we're like trying to do like a correlation between both of these stories. You have one area where you know, they don't want to they don't want to let in certain students or they want to feel free to discriminate against students, against faculty and still get you know, government funding.
But going on to Nebraska, we have like the whole portion of the public being able to weigh in on if they want to repeal the program, the private school funding, and you actually seem to have support from the public to say that, yes, this is something that we want to do. But the Secretary of State is like nauhh, you know, because that is the best argument ever to
have in life, as we all know. But I'm wondering, and I think that you possibly touched on this a bit, Scott, but AJ if you can kind of just like you know, running with your your thoughts about it's like, how can shifts in state legislation like those scene in Nebraska impact the accessibility and funding of public education compared to private education.
That it is a good question, right and.
Scott, if you want to jump in on that question, and then AJ you can first reply to your thoughts, please do so.
Could you give me a quick repeat?
I certainly can. I really can. Watch out here, here's a repeat, Glenn edit. How can how can shifts in state legislation like those scene in Nebraska impact the accessibility and funding of public education compared to private education?
Sure?
And and and if by that if you mean shifts towards supporting voucher programs, then I mean I've talked about voucher programs so many times on the nonprofits. It's just it's it's like a permanent record going on in my mind right now. And the voucher programs undermine public education
significantly in many different ways. But as you're talking about, it makes it difficult for those schools to uh, to get some of the funding, I mean, to support their programs, and so the programs suffer, and so then they give the impression that the public schools are not doing as well. Why are they not doing as well? Maybe they're not as good, you know, And and so let's give them even less money, and so it can it can start
kind of this snowball effect, which I don't know. I don't know this for sure, but I have a strong suspicion that destroying the public education system is part of the plan. And it sure seems that way to me, at least it sure seems that way. And so so when we like in Nebraska, when we see the books starting to push to push back, then we can see what the lawmaker what they need to resort to.
They need to give their argument and say, oops, I approve that, but I need that back. Can I have that back? Can you just give you that back to me?
And then I'll deny it instead, And you know, it's just it's I don't know, it's just not flying. Well, in this case, it's not flying because the Nebraska Supreme Court supported his initial assessment of the program. But yeah, I mean, it's just voucher programs already target that money that's needed by the public education system, and this just exacerbates that whole thing.
Yeah, I think god Scott just said, it's actually very true. It is part of the plan, because it is part of what the conservative said is trying to do, specifically with Project twenty twenty five, they are actually trying to not just not just use the voucher programs, but actually
completely under my and then Department of Education. And this coast shows that they are trying to make it to less people are going to go into public schools and more people are going to go into all these private schools, which believe about seventy five percent are religious.
Right, it's not even like undermined the Department of Education. They want to completely get rid of it. Yeah, yeah, completely get rid of it and just basically just have the control of how education looks be determined by the state. But the scary part about any of this, like when we're looking at whether if we look at Maine, if we look at Nebraska, or if we even look at like you know, other states that we have covered on the nonprofits previously, is that we already know that school
voucher programs are not equitable. They are going to and school choice is not real choice choice. Yeah. And also the main people that are going to suffer under particular programs like this, especially when you diverse money away from the public education system on marginalized groups and yeah, and so and especially like if you are able to have funding on the public level, go to a private school
that is allowed to discriminate. What type of education do you believe will be accessible to those who happen to be in a marginalized community if they want to roll back protections for LGBTQ people, or even if we say, hey, we want to go back to how we used to operating,
Jim Crow. You know, and as we talked about even in earlier segments, how a young person at the time was exposed to racist rhetoric and it was backed up by the Bible, and that is what that particular church used in order for them to say that you being who you are because you are you're black or what have you, that you are automatically inferior so and God
and God made you that way. So that means that you have to have a subservient attitude and you also have to have a subpar living condition, subpar education, subpart everything, because that is the position that you're supposed to be. But you know, I'm curious to know, and both of
you are, please weigh in on this. A j I want you to start, and then Scott, I'll have you round up what strategies my public school advocates employ to effectively counteract the financial resources of school choice proponents in upcoming elections.
I think you know, I've got to really plays a key role in counteracting bad legislation, whether it has already been enacted or if it's something that is observing. I'm gonna have just thought of it. Did you hear anything?
Yeah, is going to have the greatest time.
Tonight.
I must not from our start from the top to make it easier on them. Okay, So advocacy plays a key le in counteracting bad legislation, whether it has already been enacted or it's been voted on. And this isn't the first time that Republicans have tried to use public money to found private school tuition. Last year, Republicans in the Nebraska argislature actually passed a bill to allow corporations and individuals to divert millions of dollars that they owe
in state income taxes to nonprofit organizations. Right then these non profits will give that money as a gifted scholarship to private schools. But we have to consider that nearly eighty percent of private schools in the US are religious. So public school advocates with their organization called Support Our Schools successfully gathered signators to repeal on that allow. However, Support of the Private school fundingbal just replaced the build with another one this year, and that dumped the tax
credit funded funding system. And it's simply just awards private schools scholarships directly from state funds. That's a big problem here.
Yeah, and I would echo that too. I think you know what Ago is talking about, advocacy. I think that's really the main weapon that we have to support public schools.
It's because we're in an age of information, but we're also in an age of misinformation, and so I think I'm a strong believer that knowledge is power, and so knowing about the situation not only helps you to recognize that it's happening, which you know, many people, depending on your news source, depending on what part of the country you live in, depending on you know, are you part of your parents household, and you know, have to go
along with what they say. You know, there's a variety of reasons or variety of things that are going to affect your opinion and position in your knowledge of this situation. But if you can get information that's reasonable, if you can, then you can use that information to form to do crazy thought here, do your own thinking. But then but knowledge also helps you know things like what can I do?
Does my vote affect this?
How?
How should I vote?
Sometimes they phrase like those referenda on on ballots. Sometimes they phrase them kind of in tricky ways to try to, you know, manipulate how people will vote on those kind of things. And so, but knowing what's being discussed here, knowing what's being voted on, knowing that you can, you know, call your senator or call yours superintendent, or call your principle or whatever. You know, knowing that you have those options can make a big deal. And so I think knowledge,
you know, I'll just repeat it. Knowledge is power, And I think that's that's definitely true in situations like this, especially when the popul the population might otherwise be helpless. Right if if the if the, if Bob Envin had been allowed to do this, if he had been allowed to revoke his his approval of that of that repeal, allowing the repeal onto the ballot, then you know, then he's completely bypassing you know, the people's voice, like I was saying before.
But yeah, I think knowledge definitely is the key there.
Speaking of the upcoming elections, I think people often don't realize that it's not just the presidential election that during the voting, you're going to be voting on so many local offices and representatives, and you're going to be voting on local, uh, you know, options and things that are going to affect your smaller scale community, even including your schools.
Yeah, policy measures rather they are people or actual like you know, things about what are you going to do or support is on ballots too, So it definitely helps to pay attention to what's happening in your state, and especially on some of the things that are going to be put forward, so you know how to work that, okay, yes, and how to work that well. The recent legal battles in Maine and Nebraska illustrate the ongoing tension between school
choice initiatives and anti discrimination laws. And Maine, the Crosspoint Church appeal challenges state requirements that religious schools adhere to the main Human Rights Act, which aims to protect LGBTQ rights. The church argues that the anti discrimination law undermines the
Supreme Court's ruling favoring religious schools participation in state tuition program. Meanwhile, In Nebraska, a court ruling allows the repeal measure of a private school funding law to appear on the ballot, highlighting public opposition to diverting tax payer money to private institutions. Advocates argue that public schools are vital to community cohesion and should not be sidelined by private school funding initiatives.
These cases underscore the complexities of balancing religious freedoms, anti discrimination efforts, and educational equity in the current political landscape.