I called up Slate's Mark Joseph Stern the other day to talk about this Supreme Court

case he just can't stop thinking about.

I was delighted that you asked to talk about this one because it's so important and

just got drowned out by impeachment stuff.

Mark was there for oral arguments in this case last week. He says John Roberts was

remarkably chipper that morning, considering he had wrapped up his duties in the Senate just a few

hours beforehand. And impeachment stuff is obviously really important too, but like this is the

front line of separation of church and state stuff right now. Like, this is it.

And in a more normal political time, I think this case would be perceived as a blockbuster.

This case, it's about whether Montana can avoid funneling taxpayer money to religious schools.

The details are a little complicated here.

We'll get to that.

But Mark says what made this case interesting to him is how the old ideas about separating church and state

are getting reinterpreted to focus on discrimination. What the plaintiffs want to fight about

here is a single article in Montana's state constitution,

a provision that restricts funding for religious schools.

Dozens of states have provisions like this.

They're called Blaine Amendments.

A Blaine Amendment is this provision of a state constitution that bars the state from providing any public funds to religious

schools or religious institutions. There was an attempt to put this in the U.S. Constitution,

and it failed. And so all of these states adopted it instead. And the advocates for school

choice, they have this whole theory that Blaine amendments were

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