Minnesota ignores Supreme Court, continues religious discrimination

Since 2016, in three cases from Missouri, Montana, and Maine, the Supreme Court ushered in a new era in its blossoming First Amendment jurisprudence. It has emphasized that state officials cannot deny a faith-based institution, and by extension, individuals, including parents, “a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.”

Yet, in 2023, after earlier attempts to change the law were unsuccessful, the Minnesota legislature passed—and Governor (and former Democrat Vice-Presidential nominee) Tim Walz (who defended the change banning faith statements as discriminatory) signed—a new version of the 1985 Postsecondary Enrollment Options Act (PSEO) into law with one major modification.

According to its original subdivision 2, the PSEO was designed “to promote ‘rigorous academic pursuits’ and to provide ‘a wider variety of options’ to high school students by enabling them to enroll full-time or part-time in classes at eligible postsecondary institutions” regardless of their religions and without incurring tuition debt. Purportedly intended to prevent discrimination, the PSEO’s new subdivision 3 essentially singled out two faith-based schools, stating that “[a]n eligible institution must not require a faith statement from a secondary student seeking to enroll in a postsecondary course under this section during the application process 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.”

This change created two difficulties. First, it essentially forced religious families to stop using PSEO funds to send their children to faith-based schools. Second, it placed officials in faith-based institutions in the difficult position of choosing between continuing to require applicants to submit faith statements and admitting students to their on-campus PSEO programs who failed to do so.

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