Religious Liberty advocates at the Becket Fund presented oral arguments at the St. Louis based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on an issue near and dear to our constituency. They argued that Dan and Amy Pucket’s two children should not have been denied busing to their religious school by South Dakota, which cited their “Blaine Amendments”. Becket is calling this a “precedent-setting legal battle that extends far beyond busing” noting that “Pucket v. Rounds exposes how laws specifically created out of the religious bigotry of the 19th Century are still in use today”.

For our community, we think this issue was settled long ago when the Supreme Court ruled in its Everson decision that busing for private and parochial schools was explicitly permissible under the US Constitution. Hopefully, the 8th Circuit will see it that way too.
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