Supreme Court rules Maine tuition program violates First Amendment for excluding religious schools | Fox News

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Tuesday that a Maine tuition assistance program violated the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause for excluding religious schools from eligibility.

The program provides tuition assistance for students without a local public school to attend private institutions – as long as the funding is not used for religious or "sectarian" teaching. 

"Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's opinion in the case of Carson v. Maykin. "Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise."