It violates some people’s sense of purity when a public service comes into contact with a
religious
institution.
If the county gives free mulch to a playground owned by a Lutheran church, there are people who earnestly argue that the sacrosanct wall of separation between church and state has been breached.
THAT TANTRUM AT STANFORD LAW SCHOOL AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
If a state scholarship program for private-school students is available to Catholic school and Islamic school students, there are plenty who
seem to believe
the state is establishing Catholicism and Islam as state religions.
And if a disabled child at a Jewish school gets state accommodation for his disability,
California
seems to fear — well, something.
California uses public funds to accommodate the disabilities of students in public and private schools, unless those private schools are grounded in a belief in God. If your really expensive Bay Area private school is grounded in being “progressive” and is “dedicated to diversity, inclusion, and social justice,” then the state will accommodate your students with disabilities. But if your children go to Resurrection parish school in Los Angeles, the state says your child’s difficulties are your problem.
This is blatant anti-religious bigotry codified into California law. And fortunately, Jewish parents are suing to strike down the law.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
explains
:
“Chaya and Yoni Loffman, Fedora Nick and Morris Taxon, and Sarah and Ariel Perets are Orthodox Jewish parents who want to send their children with disabilities to schools that provide both an education that allows them to reach their full potential, as well as one centered around Jewish religious beliefs and practices. Shalhevet High School and Yavneh Hebrew Academy are Jewish schools in Los Angeles that provide an excellent education and seek the ability to serve the needs of children with disabilities. However, politicians in Sacramento have made that impossible by denying religious schools the right to access publicly available funding to help children with disabilities.”
If Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is against bigotry, this lawsuit will end tomorrow. He’ll announce that he won’t enforce an unjust law, and then he can instruct the legislature to repeal the discriminatory provisions.
If Newsom defends this law, though, he is showing that his vision of America is one in which religion is given less right than any other belief system and in which religious people are second-class citizens.
This lawsuit also needs to be understood in the shadow of a recent New York Times
investigation
into Jewish schools. The implicit argument in the New York Times pieces was that Jewish schools that put faith, family, and community as the highest pursuits should not have access to publicly funded school buses for poor families.
The underlying belief seems to be that taxpayer money is somehow soiled by even indirect contact with religious instruction. This is especially laughable at a time when public schools are openly crusading for a very specific worldview based on a brand-new anthropology that basically amounts to a religion.
I don’t expect the crusade against religious schools to cool off any time soon. The open question is whether Newsom will join in it.
