Time for an anti-Blaine Amendment offensive?

It’s time for a broader offensive against constitutional provisions that bar spending on religious institutions, Oklahoma’s attorney general told a room full of educational choice advocates this morning.

Scott Pruit recently helped defend a special needs voucher his home state, which was challenged under a so-called Blaine Amendment that bars public spending for “sectarian” purposes. The state Supreme Court upheld the program in a unanimous decision after finding it served a public purpose, rather than a religious one.

But Pruitt, addressing the American Federation for Children’s national policy summit in Washington, said similar provisions in other states could create a legal “impediment” to parental choice.

“I think there needs to be [ballot] initiatives in those states, and/or legislative action, to take the Blaine Amendments off the books,” he said. Religious institutions, he added, should be on a “level playing field” with secular ones.

A 2012 effort to take Florida’s prohibition off the books received little financial backing, but it faced organized opposition and unfounded allegations that its primary aim was to clear a constitutional path for school vouchers. Voters ultimately rejected it.

Pruitt said his state hasn’t gotten much pushback for sending Medicaid reimbursements to religiously affiliated hospitals, or offering publicly funded scholarships to students attending colleges with church ties. As in other states, he said, those uses are less controversial than K-12 school choice programs.

And he, along with Tim Keller of the Institute for Justice, said there might be another avenue for Blaine Amendment foes: The courts.

Right now, educational choice advocates are waging eight legal battles around the country, and Blaine Amendments figure into at least half of them, including one of two cases taking aim at a new education savings account program in Nevada.

In some of those cases, choice supporters are going on offense, arguing that keeping religious institutions from participating in scholarship programs violates their First Amendment rights.

The Institute for Justice is angling to get such an argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, in its defense of a voucher program created by a Colorado school district.

The high court hasn’t yet decided whether to hear that case, but it has decided to take up a different lawsuit that could have a similar effect. It argues a Missouri Lutheran school was unfairly barred from a program that provides children with safer playground surfaces.