Stephen Breyer in State of Montana Archives

On Education: States can fund private schools but not parochial schools

The Montana supreme court struck down the program, citing the separation of church and state and prompting state officials to deny funds to secular schools as well. The Supreme Court's liberal justices seized on that point in three separate dissents. They said Montana solved the discrimination by ending the program. "Petitioners may still send their children to a religious school," Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. "There simply are no scholarship funds to be had."

Roberts and other conservative justices said the no-aid policy had its roots in constitutional amendments in 37 states, many rooted in 19th-century anti-Catholic sentiment, that blocked religious schools from receiving public funds.