by Kate Anderson
A group of parents in Minnesota filed a lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Tim Walz Wednesday over a new law amending the Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program to prohibit granting funds to schools that require a “faith statement.”
Walz signed a $72 billion budget Wednesday that included an amendment to the PSEO program, barring students who wish to attend a school requiring a “faith statement” from using funds from the program, according to the budget. Several parents filed a lawsuit later that day with Becket Law against the governor, state Commissioner Of Education Willie Jett and the state Department of Education (DOE) over the new rule, arguing that it unfairly discriminates against their children who wish to attend Christian colleges.
“The PSEO program guarantees all students equal opportunity to pursue excellent academics at a school of their choice,” plaintiffs Mark and Melinda Loe, said in a press release.“It gave our older children a head start on college in Christ-centered communities at Northwestern and Crown. All we want is for the rest of our children to have the same opportunity to be educated in an environment consistent with their religious beliefs. Rather than discriminating against people of faith, Minnesota should be looking for ways to help all students find a school that best fits their interests and values.”
The state’s PSEO program gives 10th through 12th-grade students an opportunity to “earn college credit tuition free while still in high school, through enrollment in and successful completion of college courses” on a full or part-time basis, according to the state’s DOE website. Walz’s new budget explains that higher education institutions are no longer eligible for PSEO funding if they require a statement of faith from students or “base any part of the admission decision on a student’s race, creed, ethnicity, disability, gender, or sexual orientation or religious beliefs or affiliations.”
The lawsuit argues, however, that the question of whether religious schools can receive religious funding has been addressed by the Supreme Court, most recently in Carson v. Makin, when the justices ruled that Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement was a violation of the First Amendment.
“States discriminating against religion have already struck out three times at the Supreme Court,” the lawsuit reads. “Minnesota should not get a fourth attempt. Specifically in the education context, the Court has emphasized equal treatment because ‘religious schools and the families whose children attend them . . . are ‘member[s] of the community too.’”
A Minnesota DOE spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the department had “received the lawsuit” and is “currently reviewing it.”
Becket, Walz and Jett did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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Kate Anderson is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Tim Walz” by Tim Walz.
I heard first-hand from a Minnesota visitor some 20 years ago how Satanism was a protected religion in Minnesota. Satan breaks his toys, once he’s finished with them…
There is a huge push, beginning with Obama, who is documented to be a communist, or Marxist Revolutionary, as his former ‘comrade’ at Occidental College put it. John Drew was the president of the communist club of which Obama was a member. He said Obama was a Marxist Revolutionary and said that the U.S. would have to be overthrown in a violent revolution as had happened in China and Russia. It appears they are going to try to take us down by consolidating power and radicalizing the FBI and intelligence agencies…oh and the IRS. So there is a gigantic push now to make the U.S. a communist state. Several people who lived under communism or maoism have been speaking out, saying that what they lived in those countries is what they are seeing now in the U.S. A Chinese woman just gave an interview, pointing these things out and concluded that the democrat party is now a communist party.