Families sue over school fund ban

PORTLAND – Two Maine families filed a lawsuit Friday claiming a state law that pays tuition for secondary education is unconstitutional because it prohibits the money from being used at religious schools.

The American Center for Law and Justice of Virginia Beach, Va., filed the suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of families that live in Minot. Minot does not have a high school of its own, and the suit’s plaintiffs send their daughters to St. Dominic’s Regional High School, a private Catholic school in Auburn.

The suit claims that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June makes clear that the state should pay for tuition at religious schools. That ruling said that a voucher program in Cleveland that offers parents a wide range of choices among secular and religious schools was constitutional.

“The law in Maine discriminates against religious schools by denying parents the opportunity to use state funds provided to taxpayers for tuition at religious schools,” said Vincent McCarthy, a lawyer for the Center for Law and Justice. “The law is not only discriminatory in nature, but unconstitutional as well.”

After June’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe issued a letter saying the educational situations in Cleveland and Maine were vastly different. He said even though the court ruling said the use of public money for religious schools was permitted, the ruling did not say it was required.

“Their advice was we should continue to abide by Maine law, which currently prohibits public payments to sectarian schools,” said Department of Education spokesman Yellow Light Breen.

An estimated 17,000 Maine students from 145 small towns without schools of their own now use public money for all or part of their tuition at public and private secular schools.

State law, however, prohibits taxpayer money from being used to pay for tuition to religious schools, such as St. Dominic’s.

The state law was challenged unsuccessfully five years ago by a Raymond couple, Cynthia and Robert Bagley.

The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the law, concluding that the use of public funding for students in religious schools violates the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Six Maine families last month filed a lawsuit in Cumberland County Superior Court seeking to force the state to pay for their children’s tuition at religious schools.

The plaintiffs in Friday’s lawsuit are John and Belinda Eulitt and their daughter, Cathleen Eulitt, and Kelly MacKinnon and her daughter, Lindsey Freeman. The girls are students at St. Dominic’s, where tuition for this school year is approximately $4,985, the suit says.

Breen said state law allows towns without schools to pay no more than $6,615 a year in tuition to other schools.