Religion

Press Herald -  A recent ruling by a federal appeals court on a case involving religious institutions mostly upheld Maine’s anti-discrimination law, but said one rule about religious expression cannot be enforced.

Maine must no longer enforce a part of its anti-discrimination law that requires religious institutions that accept public school tuition funds to allow all forms of religious expression, a federal judge said this week.

It was the only part of the state’s Human Rights Act that a federal appeals court found to be an issue. The court recently issued a decision on a challenge to the law by two private religious schools. On all other components challenged by the schools, the judges found Maine’s law to be sound.

Maine had long excluded religious schools from its policy that allows public money to be used for private school tuition if students have no local public school options.

But in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that ban, and the state Legislature amended the Human Rights Act to require all schools receiving public money to follow certain nondiscriminatory hiring and admission practices. That included allowing students to express gender identities different from those assigned at birth, and permitting them to practice a different religion than the school’s.