US DOJ: VT program discriminates against children attending religious high schools

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch regarding the U.S. Department of Justice’s friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in A.M. v. French opposing Vermont’s discrimination against students based on the religious status of the high schools they attend:

“As the United States argues in its brief filed Wednesday, no state can discriminate against students based on which kind of school they attend. It makes no sense for Vermont to say it will pay for a student from a public or secular private school to take a college course at a public university, for example, but then say that a student from a faith-based private school can’t receive the same funding to attend that same class. The DOJ’s brief explains rightly that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Espinoza decision only makes what the court decided previously in the ADF case Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer more clear: The Constitution protects religious Americans against unequal treatment and prohibits laws that target Americans based solely on their religious status.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.