Catholic parents, school sue Maine over religious discrimination disguised as LGBT rights

Parents Keith and Valori Radonis are suing the state of Maine after the state refused to give them a tuition voucher to help offset the costs of the normal education options that are not available to them.

The parents, who are Catholic, live in a rural part of the state that has limited public school options, making them eligible for the state’s Town Tuitioning Fund, which pays for alternative education costs, according to Fox News.

But the state is refusing to pay for those costs at a Catholic school, alleging that Catholic beliefs violate LGTB “human rights,” making such schools ineligible for funding under the program, said the Bangor Daily News.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court told Maine in the Carson decision that they could not use anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment provisions to prevent the state from funding parents who want to use tax dollars on religious schools.

However, liberals in the state hatched a scheme that would prevent those funds going to religious schools under the guise of protecting LGBT “human rights,” said Keith Radonis.

“Even before the decision was announced, there was some maneuvering inside the highest levels of the state, between the attorney general and the commissioner of education, kind of trying to position themselves to be able to still, if you would, block [the outcome]. Basically saying, ‘Even if we lose this, we’re going to make sure that people of faith will never get to use this money,’’’ he told Fox News.

St. Dominic Academy, a private Catholic school, joined the family in the lawsuit, the second  one filed challenging Maine’s use of a 2021 LGBT “human rights” law to punish religious schools, said the Bangor Daily News.

Among other abuses, the lawsuit says that Maine’s LGBT law:

• Imposed a new religious neutrality requirement on schools, stating that “to the extent that an educational institution permits religious expression, it cannot discriminate between religions in so doing”;

• Imposed a new religious nondiscrimination requirement on schools; and 
• Removed the religious exemption that had previously allowed religious (but “nonsectarian”) schools to handle sensitive issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity in a way that reflected their faith commitments.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the plaintiffs in the suit, said that the new law gives Maine “the final word on how the school teaches students to live out Catholic beliefs regarding marriage, gender, and family life,” according to Fox News.

Even more, the new law was expressly designed to flout the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carson that finally scuttles the Blaine Amendment’s anti-religious bias in education, says Becket Fund attorneys.

The Becket Fund is confident that the court will decide against the anti-religious provisions of the state’s LGBT law. 

“Maine lawmakers boasted about changing the law to avoid the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson. That’s illegal and unfair,” said Becket senior counsel Adèle Auxier Keim, according to Catholic Votes. “We are confident that Maine’s new laws will be struck down just like their old ones were.”