(RNS) — On Tuesday (June 21), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on what may have seemed like a unique, local question: When Maine provides vouchers for students in small rural towns without public high schools to attend private schools, may it exclude religious schools?

The Carson v. Makin decision could in fact presage a return to the disastrous combination of coercive Christianity and public dollars.

The 6-3 ruling establishes that states that offer money to private schools (in places, as in Maine, that are too remote to support public schools ) will now be required to allow religious schools to participate in those programs. Previously, as Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his Carson dissent, the court has held that states may fund a student to attend a religious school but “the key word is ‘may.’”

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