Educational Implications of the Supreme Court’s Abandonment of the Historical “Balanced Neutrality” Toward Religion

• In Event: The Role of Educational Policy in a Democratic Republic, as Framed by the Constitution and the Courts

Abstract

This paper examines implications for k-12 schools of recent cases that have elevated free-exercise protections by lowering the bar for religious-discrimination claims. Religious entities must now receive neutral treatment whenever non-neutral treatment would deny a benefit to those entities. This rhetorical shift to a principle of neutrality is, however, denied to secular entities; religious entities are now privileged. This boom, however, may go bust. After explaining the current Supreme Court’s shift, we show how a subsequent Court may apply a pure neutrality rule that endangers the financial and other benefits that religious people, schools, and other nonprofits enjoyed until recently, under what we call the “balanced-neutrality” framework.

Authors

• Jonathon E. Sawyer, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Kevin G. Welner, University of Colorado - Boulder