Blaine On Trial

Blaine On Trial
Gerald J. Russello
National Catholic Register
April 6-12, 2008 Issue

Ever hear of the Blaine amendment? It’s sort of obscure, but it remains one of the last remnants of bigotry in the statute books. Some court cases are finally beginning to tackle this shameful legacy.

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In 1998, New York enacted a charter school law, which enables the state to provide funding for private or independent schools. These schools are usually in areas where the public schools are failing, and would give poorer families a chance at shaping their children’s education.

New Horizons Church Ministry is a Baptist congregation in New York City’s Harlem, and applied for a charter school license under the law.

But the law establishing the charter school program provides — following New York’s Blaine amendment — that support should be refused to any school “wholly or in part under the control of direction of any religions denomination, or in which any denominational tenet or doctrine would be taught.”

New Horizons was refused funding by the state because it proposed to establish a school in keeping with its religious principles.

Late last year, the pastor of New Horizons sued the state seeking a court to declare the prohibition of funding religious schools in the charter school law and New York’s Blaine amendment as a whole unconstitutional under the federal Constitution.

The case is now making its way through the court system, and is one of a number of challenges to state-level Blaine amendments.

The New Horizons case should be of considerable interest to all those interested in religious education, but specifically in Catholic education. While the development of parochial schools developed independently of public schools, there is no reason why Blaine amendments should block Catholic schools from accepting funds pursuant to a state charter school program.

Indeed, in poorer neighborhoods, the need for such schools is greater than ever, and eliminating Blaine amendments would enable religious schools of all types to have a chance to succeed and help their communities. And Catholics should have a particular desire to see these legal remnants of anti-Catholic discrimination erased from the statute books.

In other words, it is time for the bigoted heritage of the Blaine amendments to pass into history.


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