Federal Appeals Court Says Maine Can Bar Catholic Schools From Public Tuition Aid

A federal appeals court has ruled that the state of Maine can exclude Catholic schools and other private institutions from public funding if they do not comply with state nondiscrimination laws on gender and sexuality. The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision on July 2 in response to a request from St. Dominic Academy, a school of the Diocese of Portland, which sought an injunction against the rules.

St. Dominic Academy argued that it could not comply with requirements obliging it to facilitate students' gender transitions and that it would not require its staff to refer to students by pronouns of the opposite sex. The court held that combating discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is a "legitimate government objective" and that requiring publicly funded schools to follow the rules is "rationally related" to that objective.

A Supreme Court precedent in the background

The ruling comes years after the U.S. Supreme Court held, in the 2022 case Carson v. Makin, that Maine could not bar students from using public tuition aid to attend religious schools. The Supreme Court concluded then that the state had "identified and excluded otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise."

Adele Keim, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the Catholic school, told EWTN News that after that decision Maine changed its funding policy to include the nondiscrimination rules on gender and sexuality. "They knew that would be a red line for the schools that had sued the state," she said.

Keim said the recent ruling was partly favorable to St. Dominic Academy, because the court found that the state cannot dictate faith-related hiring practices or impose rules on religious expression on campus. The court concluded that the schools have no "constitutional protection" regarding the nondiscrimination policies.

The case could reach the Supreme Court

Keim said the decision contradicts several Supreme Court rulings, including Carson and the 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor. An appeal to the Supreme Court is under consideration, she said.

A similar suit was brought by Crosspoint, a nondenominational church that runs a Christian school. The appeals court partly combined the two institutions' claims in a single ruling.

Keim said Catholic education had been publicly funded in Maine for decades before lawmakers decided in the early 1980s to exclude Catholic schools. "It's a sparsely populated state. Its population is spread out over a wide area. The government has always worked with private schools to meet the state constitutional guarantee of free education for all children," she said.

Becket attorney Eric Rassbach wrote on the social media platform X that the Supreme Court will hear a similar case in October involving nondiscrimination rules and public funding of religious schools. "Governments can't evade Supreme Court precedent by relabeling discrimination against religion as nondiscrimination. The Constitution requires more," he wrote.