Summary of facts: Maine created a program that provided tuition to students to attend non-public schools, but it prohibited students from applying that tuition toward religious schools. In 2022, the Supreme Court held in Carson v. Makin that excluding religious schools from the program violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. While awaiting the Court’s ruling, anticipating that it would lose, Maine amended its Human Rights Law to subject religious schools that participate in the program to detailed oversight by the Maine Human Rights Commission in a way that would interfere in those schools’ religious mission. A Catholic diocese in Maine, a Catholic school, and a Catholic family eligible for tuition assistance at the school filed suit and sought a preliminary injunction, arguing that the new statutory scheme replicated the exclusion held unlawful in Carson. The district court ruled that the law does not violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs are now appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

RFI position: The Maine regulation that the Supreme Court struck down in Carson v. Makin was grounded in anti-Catholic animus, and the regulation challenged here is merely an extension of that animus. As such, the appeals court should find that it also violates the First Amendment and cannot stand.

Read the amicus brief here.