California’s charter school program offers funds to homeschool families for educational materials and curriculum—unless that curriculum is faith-based.
That is not only absurd, it’s unconstitutional.
One charter school overseeing the homeschool aid program refused to give a student credit for a grammar worksheet because it contained this sentence: “God sends the rain to help plants grow.” State officials expelled a student from another charter school simply because his mom chose a faith-based curriculum, even though a teacher admitted that it “sounds amazing.”
In addition to using funds to purchase curricula, families are also expected to be able to purchase school supplies, sports equipment, and educational toys.
However, a California charter school recently denied a parent permission to purchase a Lego set because it included “Easter chicks.”
California education bureaucrats decided that was just too religious. While “tons of LEGOs are approved,” “[s]ome holiday themes are not approved.”
The irony here is that homeschool programs like these are designed to welcome parent involvement and affirm parental choice of curriculum. But while generally promoting a model of flexible, individualized learning, California singles out religion for exclusion.
The U.S. Supreme Court rightly labels this kind of discrimination as “odious to our Constitution.” Indeed, the Court has ruled no less than three times in recent years that it violates the First Amendment. But California hasn’t gotten the message.
In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, the Court held that a church daycare couldn’t be left out of Missouri’s grant program simply because of its religious affiliation. The Court found in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that religious schools couldn’t be left out of a state voucher program because of their religious status. And in Carson v. Makin, the Court held that Maine families couldn’t be left out of the state’s school choice program because they chose Christian schools.
That is why three California families asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to review their case, Woolard v. Thurmond. On June 2, judges will hear their claims and determine whether children in religious families can thrive where they are planted, at home with the faithful guidance of their parents, without losing access to the resources that other California families enjoy.
Why wouldn’t California embrace this approach? The Golden State clings to an outdated notion that church and state must be so separate that religious families can’t ever use publicly available benefits for faith-based curriculum. But, as the American Hindu Coalition pointed out in their friend-of-the-court brief in the Woolard case, that approach chokes out the growth of diverse religious groups in our society. It poisons the creativity of parental choice in education. And its legal basis, a 1970s case called Lemon v. Kurtzman, left such a sour taste that the Supreme Court overturned it in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.
California also relies on a provision in its state constitution which has historical roots in an era of open and pervasive bigotry against religious groups, especially Catholics. The Supreme Court has recognized that these prohibitions on public money used for “sectarian” purposes, sometimes called Blaine Amendments, are “born of bigotry” and have a “shameful pedigree.”
Still, California clings to the ghosts of Lemon and Blaine, hoping they will rise from the dead yet again. Meanwhile, officials who ignore recent Supreme Court precedent undermine parental choice in education. They’ve even labeled the speech of Christian parents to their own kids in their own homes as “government speech”—claiming that it is therefore beyond the protection of the Free Speech Clause. That is nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse for censorship.
Missouri, Montana, and Maine all got the same message from the Supreme Court. California should take note. As publicly funded educational options continue to proliferate, states must ensure that religious families are free to raise their children according to their faith and thrive alongside their neighbors.
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