Church, State & Schools

After the U. S. Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment applied to the states, it fairly rigorously required separation of church and state.  This has changed recently.  In a June 2022 decision, Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court held that, if states pay tuition to nonpublic schools, they must do so regardless of whether the schools use it for religious instruction.  This is the latest in a trio of decisions that have increasingly involved the state in funding religion.  Other decisions have used the “ministerial exception”
to remove antidiscrimination protection from teachers at religious schools.  

Herb Ogden is from the UU Church of Rutland. He taught high school German and other subjects for ten years before going to law school, then practiced law in Vermont for 35 years.  He has served on various Vermont school boards for the last sixteen years and was President of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rutland from 2001 to 2004 and 2016 to 2020.

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