This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 16th, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

Several states have scholarship tax programs to allow parents to choose schools for their children,

and many parents choose religious schools, but not in Montana where a scholarship tax credit

program has been thrown out entirely over parents making exactly that choice.

The Supreme Court will resolve the issue this term.

Erica Smith with the Institute for Justice is handling the case on behalf of Montana

parents. We spoke earlier this month.

Forgive my ignorance here, it is prodigious at times, but it was my understanding. The idea of public funds going to support

young people who are attending schools,

even religious schools, was a dead issue.

Is am I can I be forgiven for understanding that?

Yes, you can be forgiven.

The US Supreme Court has long settled that it is perfectly

constitutional under the federal Constitution, under the First Amendment, to

allow states to have programs that give parents a choice of where to send their kids to school.

So those programs give parents public money or other financial assistance so that they can decide to choose a private school,

whether that school is religious or non-religious. But what's going on in Montana and some other states is that there's this separate legal

question that has come up and that's whether once you do have a scholarship

program or another type of educational choice program,

does it have to include religious schools?

Or is that showing hostility toward religion to exclude them and that would violate the federal

constitution.

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