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The Blaine Amendment was a failed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have prohibited direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation. Most state constitutions already had such provisions, and thirty-eight of the fifty states have clauses that prohibit taxpayer funding of religious entities in their state constitutions.
The measures were designed to deny government aid to parochial schools, especially those operated by the Catholic Church in locations with large immigrant populations. They emerged from a growing consensus among 19th-century U.S. Protestants that public education must be free from "sectarian' or "denominational' control, while it also reflected nativist tendencies hostile to immigrants.
The amendments are generally seen as explicitly anti-Catholic because when they were enacted public schools typically included Protestant prayer, and taught from Protestant bibles, although debates about public funding of sectarian schools predate any significant Catholic immigration to the U.S.Steven K. Green, " Blaming Blaine: Understanding the Blaine Amendment and the No-Funding Principle, 2 First Amendment Law Review 107, (2003) Thus, at the time of the Blaine amendments, public schools were not non-sectarian or non-denominational in the modern sense; nor were they completely secular. Despite his own mother and sisters being Catholic, Blaine was accused of anti-Catholicism during his political career, especially after he failed to correct a Presbyterian minister who had called Democrats the party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion during a campaign speech when he was the Republican presidential nominee in 1884. This simultaneous angering of Catholics, anti-Prohibitionists, and War Democrat is believed to have cost Blaine the election.
Grant laid out his agenda for "good common school education." He attacked government support for "sectarian schools" run by religious organizations, and called for the defense of public education "unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistical dogmas." Grant declared that "Church and State" should be "forever separate". "Religion", he said, "should be left to families, churches, and private schools devoid of public funds."Deforrest (2003)
After Grant's speech, Republican Congressman James G. Blaine proposed the amendment to the federal Constitution. Blaine, who actively sought Catholic votes when he ran for president in 1884, believed that possibility of hurtful agitation on the school question should be ended. In 1875, the proposed amendment passed by a vote of 180 to 7 in the House of Representatives, but failed by four votes to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote in the United States Senate. It never became federal law.
The state Blaine amendments remained in effect in thirty seven states until June 2020. In 2012, 56% of voters rejected a measure repealing Florida's Blaine amendment. A 60% favorable margin was required for adoption. Voters have also rejected proposals to repeal their state-level Blaine amendments in New York (1967), Michigan (1970), Oregon (1972), Washington state (1975), Alaska (1976), Massachusetts (1986), and Oklahoma (2016).
On April 20, 1974, voters in Louisiana approved a new constitution by a margin of 58 to 42 percent, which repealed the Blaine amendment that was part of that state's 1921 constitution.Art.4, Sec. 8, Constitution of Louisiana, 1921: "No money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion, or in aid of any priest, preacher, minister or teacher thereof, as such, and no preference shall ever be given, nor any discrimination made against, any church, sect or creed of religion, or any form of religious faith or worship." Louisiana's current 1974 constitution replaced it with a copy of the federal First Amendment's no-establishment and free exercise clauses, in Article 1, Sec. 8 of its Declaration of Rights; in Article 8, Sec. 13(a), it also guarantees the provision of free textbooks and "materials of instruction"
Two other states, South Carolina and Utah, have also watered down their "no-aid to religion" constitutional clauses by removing from them the word "indirect", leaving only a prohibition of direct aid or assistance to religious schools in these states.Article 11, Sec. 4 of the South Carolina Constitution states, "No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution." And Utah's constitution says, according to Article 10, Sec. 8, "Neither the state of Utah nor its political subdivisions may make any appropriation for the direct support of any school or educational institution controlled by any religious organization." Regina Reaves Hayden, annotated by Steven K. Green, Esq. Stars in the Constitutional Constellation: Federal and State Constitutional Provisions on Church and State. Silver Spring, Md.: Americans United Research Foundation, 1993, p. 109, 122.
On June 30, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that Montana's no-aid provision in its constitution, a Blaine amendment, had been inappropriately used to block tax-credit scholarship funds for private schooling for being used at a religious school in violation of the Free Exercise Clause. The ruling effectively stated that if the state offered public scholarship funds for a private school, they could not discriminate against religious schools. As a result, it is expected that states that have similar programs with no-aid provisions in their constitutions will be forced to re-evaluate any program restrictions.
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