8th Circuit Argument on Blaine Amendments
The Becket Fund has issued a press that reports:
The Supreme Court has said that the Blaine Amendments were ‘born of bigotry’ and should be ‘buried now.’ It’s time for the states to get out their shovels and start digging. It is unconscionable that governments are still enforcing discriminatory nineteenth century laws against people of faith," said Roger Severino, legal counsel at the Becket Fund . . .
The case of Pucket v. Rounds concerns the right of the Pucket children to be bused from their rural home to a Lutheran elementary school. The state refused citing South Dakota’s Blaine Amendments. The Blaine Amendments were passed at the height of nativist anti-Catholic agitation in the 1880s and are used today to bar religiously-affiliated organizations of all sorts from receiving any form of government aid in South Dakota, and dozens of other states.
The full press release should be online here soon.