The Supreme Court that George W. Bush gave us just keeps on giving. Their newest innovation is to revoke individuals’ standing to bring cases to court objecting to the use of taxpayer dollars to fund activities that promote a particular religion. It’s really rather clever. See, if the state of Arizona gives you a tax credit for sending your child to a school that only accepts people who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that’s okay because the government never collected your 500 bucks in the first place. Let’s let Justice Kennedy explain.
The usual rule is that plaintiffs who merely object to how the government spends their taxes do not have standing because they have not suffered a sufficiently direct injury. But the Supreme Court made an exception for religious spending by the government in 1968 in Flast v. Cohen.
The issue that divided the majority and the dissenters was whether granting a tax credit was the functional equivalent of collecting and spending tax money. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the two things were very different.
“Awarding some citizens a tax credit allows other citizens to retain control over their own funds in accordance with their own consciences,” Justice Kennedy wrote for himself, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The plaintiffs’ position, Justice Kennedy wrote, “assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector’s hands.” But, he added, “private bank accounts cannot be equated with the Arizona State Treasury.”
Let’s think about this. Let’s say that you owe the state of Arizona $1500 in state income taxes. That’s what you have an obligation to pay, even if you haven’t actually paid them the money yet. However, you can lower your obligation to $1000 by taking advantage of a tax credit that partially reimburses you for your child’s tuition at the School of the Sacred Bleeding Heat. According to Justice Kennedy, this is not the government cutting you a break on your taxes, but you simply spending the money the way you want to. It doesn’t put anyone else in the state of Arizona out that the government coffers just lost five hundred dollars. And no one has any standing to object despite over forty years of Supreme Court precedent. Justice Kagan wrote the dissent, and she made some rather obvious points:
In her dissent, Justice Kagan said the majority’s position was an elevation of form over substance. “Taxpayers experience the same injury for standing purposes,” she wrote, “whether government subsidization of religion takes the form of a cash grant or a tax measure.”
She offered examples. “Suppose a state desires to reward Jews — by, say, $500 per year — for their religious devotion,” she wrote. Would it matter to taxpayers offended by the practice whether the reward came in the form of a government stipend or a tax credit?
“Or assume,” she wrote, “a state wishes to subsidize the ownership of crucifixes” in one of three ways. It could purchase them in bulk and distribute them; it could reimburse buyers with a check; or it could pay with a tax credit.
“Now, really — do taxpayers have less reason to complain if the state selects the last of these three options?” Justice Kagan asked.
To answer Kagan’s last question, the answer is now ‘yes.’ Yes, we might have standing to object if the state of Pennsylvania decided to buy a New Testament for every citizen, and we could complain if the government gave everyone in our state a check to buy a Holy Bible, but we have no right to say a word about someone getting a tax credit for a sacred book they’ve already paid for (provided that they can produce the receipt). For some inexplicable reason, we have less reason to complain about the last scenario.
This is the kind of high-minded thinking that goes on now on our Republican-dominated Supreme Court. So, if the Oklahoma legislature wants to follow-up on their law banning Shariah Law with a law to provide a tax rebate for Christian reading materials for their public students, they should be able to do that now, provided that the parents buy the materials before they get the money from the government to pay for them.
Welcome to Wingnutistan.
Fuuny thing how just by looking at the headline, I knew – knew – who the five justices in the majority would be.
I used to say that it would take a couple of generations to undo the damage caused by the court majority Bush completed (with complete acquiesence by Senate Democrats). But that was before Citizens United, with its impact on who we elect to make future appointments. Now, I’m not so optimistic.
A blow for GOD, that is, you know, In God We!—Trust. A story about that: I sat in a restaurant in Damascus and saw on the other side of the street a bus on which ‘In God We Trust’ was written. Soon a whole bunch of chadored Iranian women came out of a hotel and boarded, escorted by the one obligatory man. You have to love it, the motto is written on the wall in Congress and on US currency and these Iranian women on a pilgrimage to a Shia shrine could adopt the motto as their own. Yes, it’s shocking. The Bush court will mark the US for at least the next half century—and the Democrats were no where to be seen, cowering in their post-9/11 patriot mode. Cheney was right, after that day everything changed.
The issue is not a religious one. The Supreme Court has established the basis for saying that tax credits are not the same as tax expenditures.
Now we just have to find a tax credit that is passable by an existing legislature and will cause the right-wing to argue for reversing this decision. Allowing tax credits to attend any religious school is legal under this decision. Muslims in Arizona should now use this to get tax credits for tuition at an Islamic school. Hindus at a Hindu school. And atheists tuition at a private school that specifically teaches atheism.
Oh, can I now get tax credits for tuition for sending my Christian School student to a special course that teaches science that includes a study of evolution. See. The double-dipping possibilities are endless. How about Wiccan School? It seems someone could now open a “Hogwarts Wiccan School” to get tax breaks for parents, without having to be actually Wiccan. Sure there’ll be no abuse like that.
Keeping that powder dry really worked out so well. Thanks Harry and friends.
I’ve got one:
Levy a tax on everyone in the country but give a tax credit (worth the entire value of that tax) to everyone who buys health insurance.
Once again, we must give deference to Christians because, well……….they’re Christians. Now this ruling can be most certainly also be used in non-Christian applications. But make no mistake of its intention. It is another wink and nod to the fundamentalist religious right. You know, all those same people screaming about Sharia law being on our doorstep. And it is one other reason that religion, for the most part, is a poison in this country that destroys much more than it builds as it leeches ever greater into our daily existence. It is used, in many circles, as simply a tool of oppression. And those who wield it are ruthless in its usage and more than willing to use it to destroy our freedoms in the name of their god. If you’re not one of them or willing to at least accede to their views, then, in their opinion, you are not worthy of your citizenship.
Lays an interesting precedent for a new angle on tax ‘credit’ useage.
Looks like I need to buy a bunch of bibles (for the purpose of kindling) and then send the bill to the state!
The Coming Dominionist Takeover
I’ve been spending time lately looking at Dominionism, a theocratic libertarianism, which I presume to be underlying many of the recent political developments.
Along with the ‘rationalism bias’ that produces a blind spot for progressives, there’s a tendency to assume that the Christian Right is only seeking relatively benign objectives such as school prayer, etc. While there are some Christian conservatives whose goals are fairly benign or even laudable, a large and growing segment of Christian right is intent on radical changes in society and government. These Dominionists, or Reconstructionists, are implacable in their desire to remake government. Moreover, they apparently comprise a substantial portion of the Tea Party.
At this point, when a government shutdown is looming, everyone here needs to be aware that the Dominionists would consider the elimination of much of the federal government as a huge victory. It’s not hyperbolic rhetoric. And their belief in this goal isn’t open to discussion because it’s part of Dominion theology and thus held dogmatically.
Whether this story is about standing, since there has a trend among Republican appointees to limit the ability to have one’s day in court, my point is no less pertinent. It may be that the SCOTUS is merely tossing a cookie to a very important segment of the Republican coalition. On the other hand, it could be diagnostic. Those to whom the Dominionist label applies believe in a stealth strategy so this could be yet another of their victories in their pursuit of eliminating the wall of separation. Establishing Christianity as our state religion (and thus eviscerating the 1st amendment) is their goal. It’s a necessary pre-condition to establishing a theocratic state, and one with a harsh Old Testament type of legal code along with the elimination of the entire welfare state and all environmental laws.
It’s not a question of whether their radical agenda can be completely accomplished now. Currently, the Tea Party holds great sway over Republican politics. Very, very few Republicans are presently willing to buck the Tea Party. Even a small victory for them is dangerous enough. Moreover, their influence over the House puts them in a position in which intransigence achieves their goals. They can play Chicken, crash, and still come out ahead in their eyes. Finally, there’s been an enormous amount of money (or tax breaks) given to the Christian Right in recent years. Some of that money goes to lobbying for further government cuts. It’s a little like paying terrorists or arming someone to destroy your government. And unlike conservative reformers who seek to merely curtail expenditures, Dominionists consider the destruction of government as one of the primary objectives.
Maybe that helps to explain this.
Daystar, the religious broacaster that is buying the PBS stations in your link, appears to be Dominionist or likeminded. The term Dominionist is a slightly loose term applied from without to a swath of the Christian Right who believe in taking over all of society’s institutions.
One huge issue that I hadn’t mentioned is the issue of Israel. Daystar is clearly in the camp of Christian Zionists, who believe that the end times comes once all the Jews have resettled in Israel, and this therefore provides a powerful US ally for any actions by Israel. This has made it even harder to find solutions to the Palestinian-Israel situation. To my knowledge, there’s considerable overlap between CZs and Dominionists but I don’t know if there’s complete overlap.
A diariast on dKos has raised another interesting observation. A goodly number of religious right “Christian” schools were established as a dodge to desegregation of the public schools. Whites who sent their kids to these schools still controlled school boards and cut public school budgets in the name of lowering taxes. But it was really about inequality in opportunity. The whole voucher idea was a way to spread this inequality of opportunity through school choice and underfunded vouchers. The public never accepted vouchers; the Supreme Court just introduced inequality through the back door. If your income is so low that you don’t pay taxes, it is unlikely that a conservative plan will pay tax credits–just look at their record on the earned income tax credit.
Only this time segregation depends on historically segregated “exclusive” and ghettoized neighborhoods–and on economic segregation. But there will now be enough affluent blacks to provide cover by having enough desegregated private or religious (especially Catholic) schools.
The rural South, especially in AL, MS, LA and south GA returns to the way it used to be.
Looks like a three-fer: subsidizing religious schools, privileging tax credits over expenditures, and chipping away at Brown v. Board of Ed.
We ought to be clear that while W. proposed, Democrats in the Senate disposed and allowed total wingnuts, and known wingnuts at that, to become Supremes. This is the logical result of the extreme Democrat fail over the past 15 years to fight for bedrock principles of constitutional democracy, and it’s destroying the country.