Supreme Court to review Montana school choice program
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will consider reviving a Montana program that gives tax credits to people who donate to private-school scholarships. The state’s highest court had struck down the program because it violated the Montana constitution’s ban on state aid to religious organizations.
The justices say Friday that they will review the state court ruling, which Montana parents are challenging as a violation of their religious freedom under the U.S. Constitution.
The Montana Supreme Court ruled that the program giving tax credits of up to $150 for donations to organizations that give scholarships to private-school students amounts to indirect aid to schools controlled by churches.
The Republican-led Legislature passed the law in 2015 as an alternative to a school voucher program designed to give students who want to attend private schools the means to do so. Most private schools in Montana have religious affiliations, and more than 90 percent of the private schools that have signed up with scholarship organizations under the program are religious.
The state court ruling invalidated the entire program, for religious and secular schools alike. In urging the Supreme Court to reject the appeal, Montana said it can’t be compelled to offer a scholarship program for private education. The state told the justices that the Montana court decision did not single out students at religious schools because the state court ruling struck down the entire program.
Supreme Court agrees to hear 1998 embassy bombings case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case about billions of dollars awarded by a court to victims of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
More than 200 people died in the attacks and more than 1,000 were injured. The justices are starting their summer break, but said they would hear the case after they resume hearing arguments in the fall.
The case the justices agreed to hear involves a group of individuals who were victims of the attacks and their family members. They sued Sudan, arguing that it caused the bombings by providing material support to al Qaeda.
A trial court awarded approximately $10.2 billion in damages including approximately $4.3 billion in punitive damages. But an appeals court overturned the punitive damages award. The Supreme Court will determine if that decision was correct.
A law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act generally says that foreign countries are immune from civil lawsuits in federal and state courts in the United States. But there’s an exception when a country is designated a “state sponsor of terrorism” as Sudan was. The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether the law allows punitive damages for events that happened before the most recent revision to the act in 2008.
Supreme Court sends Florida cross case back to lower court
WASHINGTON (AP) — Court decisions directing the removal of a cross from a public park in Florida should get another look, after a Supreme Court ruling that upheld a different cross in Maryland, the high court said Friday.
The justices sent the Florida case back to a lower court to decide whether previous decisions that the cross should be removed were correct or if the cross should stay given the Supreme Court’s latest opinion.
In the Maryland case decided last week, the justices let stand a war memorial in the shape of a cross that is located on a public highway median and maintained by public officials. The approximately 40-foot-tall cross was completed in 1925 and honors soldiers who died in World War I. Seven of the court’s nine justices sided with supporters of the cross in ruling the it should stand.
A majority of justices signed on to an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that said “when time’s passage imbues a religiously expressive monument, symbol or practice with this kind of familiarly and historical significance, removing It may no longer appear neutral.” Alito also wrote that the Maryland cross’ connection to World War I was important in upholding it because crosses, which marked the graves of American soldiers, became a symbol closely linked to the war.
The Florida case involves a cross that was first put up in Pensacola’s Bayview Park in 1941 for a community Easter service. It has been the site of annual Easter services since. The cross was at first made of wood but was replaced in 1969 by a 34-foot-tall concrete cross.
The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Washington-based American Humanist Association sued over the cross on behalf of four current or former residents, arguing that it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over others. A trial court and appeals court agreed.
Luke Goodrich, an attorney at the Washington-based Becket Fund For Religious Liberty, which is representing the city of Pensacola and defending the cross, said he believes the Supreme Court’s recent Maryland case is “very helpful” to their case. He pointed to a line in Alito’s opinion that suggests a “presumption of constitutionality for longstanding monuments, symbols and practices.” And he said the cross is “part of the history and culture of the city of Pensacola.” While the Pensacola cross was not, like the Maryland cross, put up to memorialize World War I veterans, it was put up on the eve of World War II and has become a gathering place, Goodrich said.
But Monica Miller, an attorney with the American Humanist Association, which was also involved in the challenge to the Maryland cross, said the two crosses are “significantly different.” And she said she believes when the Florida case is reviewed the cross will again be found to be unconstitutional. Unlike the Maryland cross, the Florida cross’ primary purpose is for Easter sunrise services, she said.
