Discriminatory Blaine Amendments Denied Educational Opportunities to Families in Need

Washington, D.C. Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Montana’s discriminatory “Blaine Amendment” was cheered by members of the Project 21 black leadership network, who called it a major win for poor and minority parents who have been forced into failing public schools based solely upon where they live.

“The justices in the majority tore down a monument to intolerance and discrimination,” said Project 21 Co-Chairman Council Nedd II, a former charter school teacher in Washington, D.C. “Since the Reconstruction era, Blaine Amendments have been used to keep children from getting the best possible education by denying their parents a true choice of schools.

Blaine Amendments stand in the way of parents’ choice to protect their children spiritually and to provide them with an excellent education in a religious school free of the profanity, bullying and anti-Christian indoctrination often found in a public school environment,” said Project 21 member Melanie Collette.

In the decision, a 5-4 majority held that Montana’s application of a Blaine Amendment to stop the use of tax credits for faith-based institutions “discriminated against religious schools and the families whose children attend or hope to attend them in violation of the Free Exercise Clause” of the U.S. Constitution.

In an amici curiae (or “friends of the court”) legal brief that Project 21 joined, the justices were told that “denying parents their preferred educational option simply because their desired school has a religious affiliation inflicts direct and significant injury on parents and children.”

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