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Wednesday, June 07, 2023

What is wrong with some people who think it is just fine to discriminate against somebody because of his/her religion, or denial of religion as an atheist? That is just not right. Yet people are suing to be allowed to discriminate against atheists, Hindus such as the Mpls. Fed head, Muslims, or Jews. They want to cause state action against others, based on their own myths and biases, not just to be left alone to exercise their prejudices, but to be accorded state co-participation public money

 Don't they understand what they do is separate from state action assisting them doing it? The legislature passed non-discrimination legislation and they sue to block it being enforced.

And then one habitual bloviator even has the gall to post online that it is, " Governor Walz's Attack on Faith-Based Education." That is pure bullshit. Moreover, the one making that declaration presumably is bright enough to know he is misstating fact and should stop. It is not a statement made out of ignorance of the facts, it is a deliberate misstatement of what is known truth.

This is the same type of offensive action as the struck down loyalty oath job requirements back during the '50s RedScare. Equally egregious.

Now that the venting is done, let's look at the situation. KSTP reports:

Two religious colleges have sued the Walz administration because of language in the education budget that prohibits schools from requiring “faith statements” from students applying for a program that lets them earn college credits while in high school.

Two families with children eligible for the Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program claim they won’t be able to use funds from that program at Crown College in St. Bonifacius or the University of Northwestern-St. Paul because those schools require all students on campus “share their Christian beliefs.”

In the federal lawsuit filed Wednesday against Gov. Tim Walz, Minnesota Education Commissioner Willie Jett and the state Department of Education, the plaintiffs state that religious institutions have participated in the PSEO program since its inception in 1985 and that changing the eligibility requirements now would violate the schools’ right to practice their religion.

Expect the bunch of them to go judge shopping as far as they can get away with it.

First clarify, Walz and the Administration is being sued, not as instigator of anything, but to enjoin them from enforcing a duly passed provision from the legislature.

KSTP decently has posted the federal district court complaint online. 

At its p.7 it finally gets to facts that matter by pleading:

39. On May 17, 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law redefining the PSEO Act’s term “Eligible Institution” to explicitly exclude institutions on the basis of faith.
40. Governor Walz signed the bill into law today, on May 24, 2023, and the law will take effect July 1, 2023.
41. The text of the law makes clear that it targets religious institutions that promote religious community on their campuses, stating: An 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. H.F. 2497, 93rd Leg. (Minn. 2023) (emphasis added).
42. The effect of the amendment is to force religious families like the Loes and the Ericksons to forgo using PSEO funds within the religious environment provided by the religious schools of their choice.

First, exclusion is not "on the basis of faith." It is certain explicit conduct that is forestalled. It is not about belief, it is about not allowing discrimination against classes of people. The statement of the legislation makes that clear.

Second, the effect of the amendment is not to force any citizens into religious constrictions, it is to deny state action, provision of money benefits, to institutions which discriminate against non-Christians. 

You impose an "I'm Christian" loyalty oath against non-Christians, you exclude them from your program, you do not get public money, which is for those institutions which do not discriminate in any way the statute excludes. 

It is clear. It is simple. It is the discriminating institutions that are constrained, and if some parent wants his kid being there nobody is stopping it. Just, no money toward benefiting bigoted institutions doing bigoted conduct.

Emmer knows better. He can read. He can think. He can misstate, big time.