Maine’s largest Christian school filed an appeal Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit as part of its long-running dispute with the State of Maine over alleged religious discrimination spearheaded by Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and Education Commissioner Pender Makin.

The case revolves around a 2021 amendment to the Maine Human Rights Act, which prohibits religious schools from receiving state funding if — according to the Maine Attorney General — the school engages in discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, or religion.

Crosspoint Church — which runs Bangor Christian School — filed a lawsuit last year challenging the amendment that did away with certain exemptions for religious schools that receive funding through the state’s longstanding Town Tuitioning program.

Town Tuitioning, first launched in 1873, allows students residing in districts without a public school to attend the public or private school of their family’s choosing. Under this program, sending towns are responsible for paying tuition costs directly to receiving schools.

In 2022, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Carson v. Makin that Maine could not require schools to be “nonsectarian” in order to be eligible for funding through this program.

According to the Court, enforcement of this criteria represented a violation of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

Immediately following the release of this decision, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) issued a statement doubling down on the State’s position that religious schools should be excluded from the Town Tuitioning program on account of their religious beliefs:

“The education provided by the schools at issue here is inimical to a public education.

They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff. One school teaches children that the husband is to be the leader of the household.

While parents have the right to send their children to such schools, it is disturbing that the Supreme Court found that parents also have the right to force the public to pay for an education that is fundamentally at odds with values we hold dear.”

Also in the statement, Attorney General Frey vowed to explore ways to avoid allowing religious schools to participate in the program going forward.

“I intend to explore with Governor Mills’ administration and members of the Legislature statutory amendments to address the Court’s decision and ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry,” he said.

Crosspoint Church took legal action against Commissioner Makin and the Maine Human Rights Commission in early 2023 for having amended state law in an alleged attempt to preemptively to narrow existing religious exemptions in anticipation of the Court’s then-forthcoming ruling.

Passed in 2021, the amendments to the Maine Human Rights Act at the center of this lawsuit altered exemptions for religious institutions that had previously been on the books in such a way that they would only apply to schools that do not receive state funding.

Consequently, religious schools were required to comply with anti-discrimination requirements regarding religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation in order to participate in the Town Tuitioning program.

The law was amended to include “religious neutrality” language for schools accepting state funds, requiring that “to the extent that an educational institution permits religious expression, it cannot discriminate between religions in so doing.”

It further added a “religious nondiscrimination requirement” preventing these schools from discriminating on the basis of religion “in any academic, extracurricular, research, occupational training or other program or activity.”

The Maine Human Rights Act was also amended so as to bar religious schools that accept state funds from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, regardless of whether or not this would result in a violation of their faith.

Click Here to Read This Section of the Maine Human Rights Act

“This ‘poison pill’ effectively deters religious schools from participating and thereby
perpetuates the religious discrimination at the heart of the sectarian exclusion,” Crosspoint Church argued in their March 2023 complaint.

In June of this year, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock reaffirmed his previous denial of Crosspoint Church’s request for an injunction against the State’s enforcement of these provisions while their lawsuit is pending, suggesting that the state’s rules are “neutral, generally applicable, and rationally related to a legitimate government interest.”

“After forty years of religious discrimination in Maine’s school choice program, the state continues to unconstitutionally exclude certain religious schools from participating in the state’s school choice program because of their religious beliefs,” Crosspoint Church wrote in their appeal to the First Circuit Tuesday.

“This ‘poison pill’ is designed to deter religious schools from participating and thus perpetuates the religious discrimination at the heart of the state’s prior sectarian exclusion,” they said.

“From the start, Maine’s Attorney General and the then-Speaker of the House of Representatives admitted this scheme was intentional,” the appeals states. “The legislature crafted the poison pill explicitly to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson. The poison pill also specifically targeted Crosspoint, who operates the school that two of the Carson plaintiffs attended.”

“This perpetuates the religious discrimination at the heart of the sectarian exclusion,” Crosspoint argued.

Click Here to Read the Full Appeal to the First Circuit

“Families should be free to choose the educational option that works best for them without the State’s unconstitutional interference,” Associate Counsel for First Liberty Institute Camille Varone said in a statement Wednesday.

“Maine excluded religious schools from its school choice program for over 40 years,” Varone continued, “but the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that such religious discrimination must end.”

In June of 2023 — several months after Crosspoint Church first took legal action against the State — St. Dominic Academy in Auburn filed a lawsuit that outlined a slate of similar allegations.

In their complaint, St. Dominic Academy largely echoed the claims made by Crosspoint Church, accusing the defendants of having engaged in religious discrimination by attempting to “‘outmaneuver’ the Supreme Court” with their 2021 amendments to the Maine Human Rights Act.