My home state is one of a handful of states that provides dollar-for-dollar tax credits (up to a certain limit) for individuals and corporations that make contributions to student scholarship organizations, which in turn provide assistance to needy parents who wish to enroll their children in private schools. This program, pioneered by Arizona, withstood more than a decade of litigation before it was upheld by the Supreme Court in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn.
The idea behind it is that since there’s such resistance–mounted largely by teachers’ unions–to education vouchers, encouraging the formation of private organizations that funnel private money to students attending private schools would promote school choice without running afoul of the often toxic politics connected with fights over vouchers.
No such luck, as the Arizona case demonstrates.
The latest tack–or should I say “attack”?–abandons the argument, long repudiated by the Supreme Court, that vouchers or tax credits violate the First Amendment Establishment Clause. Instead of focusing on the religious character of the schools, the critics call attention to their policies regarding homosexuality.
The [Georgia] program permits individual and corporate taxpayers to divert a portion of their state taxes—a dollar-for-dollar reduction in taxes—to provide public financing to private organizations called student scholarship organizations (SSOs). In turn, these SSOs provide funds to private schools for all or part of a student’s tuition.
This program of educational tax credits is providing public financing to a large number of private schools in Georgia that have draconian anti-gay policies and practices.
There are two easy responses to this line of argument. First, until my money enters the public treasury, it’s my money. The funds going to these organizations are not public funds, but private funds. They do not constitute state support for the schools, but private support, encouraged by the state (to be sure), for needy families. As long as I’m able to give to a church that teaches traditional biblical morality, then there’s nothing wrong with my giving to an organization that provides scholarships to students attending schools that incorporate that morality in their missions.
The argument itself operates on the assumption that any income that is potentially taxable is, in effect, public money. If so, then there is no real difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction. Following this logic, the next step would be to attack the the tax deductibility of contributions to churches that adhere to the traditional biblical teaching regarding homosexuality. I have no doubt but that there are some who would love to make this very chilling move.
This is connected to the second response: the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause protects the rights of religious organizations to disseminate their faith and its moral teachings. To deny people the opportunity to make a contribution to the faith of their choice is to deny their religious freedom.
We need go no further than to say that the state tax credit program is available to all eligible scholarship organizations; it does not favor one or another kind of organization. The dollars go wherever the donors direct them. In turn, the scholarships go wherever the parents direct them. It is quite a stretch to claim that this is public support of the sort asserted above.
It is, however, not at all a stretch to regard this complaint as a serious attempt to encroach upon religious liberty.
January 23rd, 2013 | 2:20 pm
In July 1970, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) concluded that it could “no longer legally justify allowing tax-exempt status [under 501(c)(3)] to private schools which practice racial discrimination…” and could not “treat gifts to such schools as charitable deductions for income tax purposes [under 170].” IRS News Release, July 7, 1970, reprinted in App. in No. 81-3, p. A235.
Bob Jones University and Goldsboro Christian Schools, Inc., of North Carolina, challenged this IRS ruling all the way to the US Supreme Court. It was uncontested that Bob Jones University’s segregationist policies were based on sincerely held religious beliefs that “God intended segregation of the races and that the Scriptures forbid interracial marriage.”
Nevertheless, in Bob Jones University v. US, the Supreme Court held that the religion clauses of the First Amendment do not prohibit the IRS from revoking the tax exempt status of a religious university whose practices are contrary to a compelling government public policy, such as eradicating racial discrimination. The Court made clear, however, that its holding dealt “only with religious schools—not with churches or other purely religious institutions.”
Rehnquist was the lone dissenter.
Seems like blatant viewpoint discrimination to me; the court sacrificed freedom of religion for political correctness.
January 23rd, 2013 | 3:39 pm
Seems like blatant viewpoint discrimination to me; the court sacrificed freedom of religion for political correctness.
nobody.really,
Do you consider the eradication of racial discrimination to be mere “political correctness”?
January 23rd, 2013 | 4:17 pm
The latest tack–or should I say “attack”?
I am not sure why the word attack is needed. The information provided by the Times and the Southern Education Foundation appears to be accurate. The Supreme Court may have ruled that tax credits are not government expenditures, but most economists disagree. They are now a way of funneling what would have been tax revenue to purposes that government could not fund directly. It is just a way of laundering government money to be spent (in only some cases, of course) on things the government has no business spending money on.
I think a distinction should be made between schools that teach homosexuality is wrong as part of their religion curriculum and schools declare they will expel a student for saying, “I am gay.” Does this mean if students are having doubts or difficulties about their sexual orientation, they can’t even discuss it with a trusted teacher or guidance counsellor? I remember a talk I had with a young gay man once who felt that God had played a trick on him by making him gay. I asked him if he had talked to anyone at his church, and he told me he didn’t date. The pastor of his church, he told me, believed that gay people were cooperating with Satan (or some such nonsense). It certainly is not true in the Catholic Church, or in any major denomination that I know of, but there are pastors and preachers out there who believe that a homosexual orientation is a choice and a wicked one. I would certainly not want my money financing a school that would expel a student for sexual orientation alone. It is one thing to teach certain behavior is wrong or to ban it in a code of conduct. It is quite another thing to discriminate based on orientation alone.
January 23rd, 2013 | 4:20 pm
Sorry! The sentence above should read: ” I asked him if he had talked to anyone at his church, and he told me he didn’t dare [not date!]“.
January 23rd, 2013 | 6:03 pm
I consider efforts to eradicate private racial discrimination through the selective withholding of tax exemptions to be political correctness.
As far as I know, Congress may extend tax exemptions to advance any legitimate governmental purpose. IRS Code section 501(c)(3) grants tax exemptions for not-for-profit educational institutions – arguably a legitimate governmental purpose. Bob Jones University was and is a not-for-profit educational institution. I leave the syllogism to you.
Congress need not establish a tax exemption for not-for-profit educational institutions. But if it does so, I expect administrative agencies such as the IRS to implement the law even-handedly. If Congress doesn’t like Bob Jones University getting tax exemptions, Congress needs to find a viewpoint-neutral way of implementing that policy.
I favor free exercise of religion and equal protection before the law – even for bigots. “[I]f there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Of course, I’m quoting from US v. Schwimmer, defending the right of a Quaker to seek US citizenship even though she would not pledge to be willing to take up arms in the nation’s defense. And, of course, I’m quoting the dissent. The court ruled against my point of view in that case, just as in Bob Jones University. And in Locke v. Davey, when the Court found that Washington State’s practice of offering scholarships for any purpose under the sun EXCEPT THEOLOGY somehow didn’t represent discrimination on the basis of religion.
So if you don’t share my point of view — hey, you’re in…
January 23rd, 2013 | 6:05 pm
… good company!
January 24th, 2013 | 4:06 pm
We homeschool. We get no direct subsidy or tax credit or tax deduction. And most home schoolers (that I know, seems to be the thinking of the Texas Home School Association, anyway) agree that we’d rather render unto Ceasar than to receive any of the type of support that ALWAYS comes with strings attached.
January 27th, 2013 | 9:36 am
David: “The Supreme Court may have ruled that tax credits are not government expenditures, but most economists disagree.”
That’s because most economists are so far divorced from political and social reality that I don’t think they are really studying economics any more.
It really is pretty basic . . . will/do people behave differently when they are allowed to direct their own income to a particular use than when the government collects everyone’s taxes and then spends it for them for similar ends?
Yes, unequivocally. Read the Supreme Court case . . . it makes far more sense than anything I’ve heard from an economist on this topic.
January 28th, 2013 | 5:37 am
Clearly, the time is long past due for separating school and state.
January 28th, 2013 | 4:12 pm
Not sure which case we’re referring to here.
Yes, the Supreme Court upheld the idea that a private actor may choose to use a government voucher to obtain a religious education, because the manner in which the private actor uses a voucher cannot be attributed to government. This makes sense to me.
By the same token, when a private actor pays money to government in lieu of buying insurance for his employees, and government uses that money to subsidize the purchase of insurance providing birth control, that government expenditure cannot be attributed to the private actor. In other words, the private actor has no basis to raise contentious objections to paying the ObamaCare penalty – except to the extent that they’d raise contentious objections to paying any other tax.
Conversely, if you’re going to claim that you are somehow tied to how government spends the money you pay in ObamaCare penalties, then we also have to concede that vouchers represent government spending and thus cannot be spent for sectarian purposes.
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