St. Paul – Despite a gaggle of candidates, there have been few substantive disagreements on issues
among the nine conservative Republicans vying for the Minnesota GOP nomination for governor – until
Wednesday. Former State Auditor Pat Anderson, the only candidate to have held statewide constitutional
office, took direct exception to two of the seven points in Rep. Marty Seifert’s “Leadership Plan for
Minnesota.”
“Marty’s philosophical position agrees with mine,” said Anderson, “but his press conference comment that
that education vouchers run afoul of the Minnesota state constitution is simply wrong. Ironically, he makes
another proposal — that welfare benefits for new residents be ‘no higher than the state they are coming
from’ – that has previously been held unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court.”
“Unfortunately for the parental school choice movement, Marty has fallen for the rhetoric of those statists
more concerned about preserving the state’s monopoly on education than about providing the best
education for individual students,” said Anderson. “And a candidate from the political party that preaches
allegiance to constitutional principles shouldn’t be going around proposing legislation that the State
Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional over a decade ago.”
Minnesota’s “Blaine Amendment” doesn’t target education vouchers.
Anderson supports reform in which state education funding would “follow the student.” On her campaign
website, anderson4governor.com, Anderson proposes reform that would extend parental school choice,
supported by vouchers and tuition tax credits, outside the district school system administered by the state
to any accredited school including private religious schools.
“I don’t question Marty’s dedication to the concept of parental school choice,” said Anderson. “But his
statement that the Minnesota constitution doesn’t allow for vouchers runs contrary to a plain language
interpretation of Article 13, Section 2, of the document and contrary to recent state and federal Supreme
Court decisions.”
In his press conference in St. Paul, at which he laid out his “Leadership Plan for Minnesota” including
commitment to “a K-12 bill that respects parental choices,” Seifert responded to a question about
vouchers saying, “The constitution for Minnesota simply doesn’t allow for vouchers. … Article 13, Section
2, of the Minnesota constitution doesn’t allow for it. … I don’t want to get in a situation with vouchers
because I just don’t think Minnesota’s constitution allows for it.”
“Marty is simply wrong on the constitutional law in play on vouchers, and I can’t let his error stand to give
aid and comfort to the opponents of meaningful parental school choice,” said Anderson.
“Commitment to parental school choice is the essence of the education section of the Republican Party
Platform, and a lot of people, including gubernatorial candidate, Sen. David Hann, have put in too much
hard work fighting for school choice to have it undermined by blatantly bad constitutional analysis.”
Article 13, Section 2, of the Minnesota Constitution, titled “Prohibition as to aiding sectarian schools,” reads: “In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools
wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are
promulgated or taught.”
That prohibition was not in the original Minnesota Constitution, but was added in 1877 as one of 29
nationwide so-called “Blaine Amendments,” which grew out of the anti-immigrant sentiment, specifically
anti-Catholic sentiment, prevalent in the country at the close of the 19th and into the 20th centuries.
The “sectarian” language had a specific purpose. Courts define a “sectarian” school as one in which
“distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any … religious sect are promulgated or taught.” A Catholic
school would clearly meet the definition of “sectarian,” but public schools of the era, which were de facto
Protestant schools where teachers were required by legislation to read aloud from the Bible, were not
“sectarian” in that they did not teach a specific “creed” but a “non-sectarian” generic form of
Protestantism. The “melting pot” metaphor in practice used public education to convert European Catholic
immigrants to American Protestantism. Catholics rebelled. As taxpayers, they wanted government aid for
a parallel Catholic school system.
“The plain language of Minnesota’s Blaine Amendments doesn’t target voucher programs as Marty
erroneously assumes” said Anderson. “It was a response to direct public aid to religious schools, not to
vouchers. The Minnesota constitution prohibits the state from directly funding a religious school system
parallel to the public school system. A voucher is not direct aid for a religious school system. An
educational voucher is issued to parents who may choose to use it at any accredited school, including private religious schools. State and federal courts have held that as long as the parents have an array of
diverse alternatives, educational vouchers pass constitutional muster.”
In his press conference, Seifert vaguely cited a Minnesota Supreme Court case in which the court held
that tax credits for private education costs were unconstitutional. The actual 1974 case, Minnesota Civil
Liberties v. State, was adjudicated based on the federal Establishment Clause, not the state’s Blaine
Amendment. Further, according to an Institute for Justice report, the Court’s decision was based on a
“now-rejected premise” that tax credits are the functional equivalent of unrestricted cash payments to
parents for sending their children to religious schools.
More relevant recent cases in Wisconsin and Ohio have validated the use of vouchers as did the federal
case, Zelman v. Harris, which upheld constitutionality of educational vouchers in the Cleveland school
system. The Wisconsin case in particular (Jackson v. Benson, 1998) held that the Milwaukee Parental
Choice Program does not violate either the state’s Compelled Support Clause or its Blaine Amendment.
The Blaine Amendment has never been addressed in Minnesota courts; however, Minnesota and
Wisconsin both trace their state constitutional roots back to the principles of the Northwest Ordinance and
their Blaine Amendments are very similar as are their histories of judicial review.
In judging the constitutional validity of a voucher program, courts generally employ a five-pronged test: 1)
the program must have a valid secular purpose, 2) aid must go to parents and not to the schools, 3) a
broad class of beneficiaries must be covered, 4) the program must be neutral with respect to religion, and
5) there must be adequate nonreligious options.
“It is crucial that a voucher program be designed to meet the requirements of the state and federal
constitutions,” said Anderson. “But that is a different proposition than Marty’s contention that educational
vouchers and constitutionality are mutually exclusive.”
“Make no mistake, more choice within the state system as Marty proposes is good. Expanding the charter school program is good. But those are tactical bits and pieces of the larger issue of enabling meaningful
parental school choice. While choice outside the system of the state’s district school system is not a
panacea for all that is wrong with public education, without choice, it is unlikely we can solve those
problems,” Anderson said.
“In plain language Article 13, Section 2, legally, and rightly, prohibits direct state aid to religious schools,”
said Anderson. “However, Article 13, Section 2, does not prohibit the use of educational vouchers at
private religious schools. Courts have validated voucher programs that meet specific constitutional tests.
As governor I will push for full, meaningful and constitutional parental school choice. I will not be
intimidated by those more concerned with preserving the authority of the state than with educating our
children.”
Minnesota Court held durational requirement on welfare benefits is unconstitutional
As part of his “Common Sense” campaign for welfare reform, Seifert proposes that welfare benefits for
new residents be “no higher than the state they are coming from.” That might be “common sense,” but it
is not the law and hasn’t been since the 1993 Minnesota Supreme Court Case Mitchell v. Steffen.
“Limiting welfare for new residents of Minnesota is not a new idea,” said Anderson. “It has already been
tried and found to be unconstitutional based on a long history of judicial reasoning. When a statute
actually deters travel, when impeding travel is its primary objective or when it uses any classification that
serves to penalize exercise of that right, it unconstitutionally interferes with the right to travel and violates
the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
In the Mitchell case, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that “a durational residency requirement for full
general assistance work ready benefits burdened the right to travel, thereby violating the Federal
Constitution, notwithstanding the fact that newly arrived residents of the state would receive benefits
equal at least to those they were eligible to receive in their former state.”
“I realize that pledging to crackdown on welfare fraud and abuse is a sure-fire applause line in front of
conservative audiences, but running for governor is also a high visibility undertaking,” said Anderson, who
has experienced public scrutiny in her previous statewide races for State Auditor. “Rightly or wrongly, a
candidate’s views are taken as views of the Republican Party. I cannot standby and allow the Republican
Party, the party that preaches allegiance to constitutional principles, to be tarnished by less-than-rigorous
constitutional analysis by a candidate for governor.”
“Marty has some good ideas,” Anderson adds, “but he is thinking like a legislator focused on the political
need to ‘get something done,’ and so he disregards the rigorous analysis necessary to “get the right
things done.”
“When it comes to education the state’s chief executive must focus on the actual need, educating
children. Enabling families of all economic backgrounds both district school and private school choice is
the right thing to do.”
“Tweaking around the edges of welfare reform with proposals like durational residency requirements and
clamping down on EBT welfare debit card abuse is a good legislative initiative, but the state’s chief
executive should not be acting like the state’s chief legislator. She must be thinking strategically and
looking at the big picture. She should be driving down to the root cause of the problem, which is the ever-
expanding scope of state government outside its constitutionally established limits.”
“One can’t address the constitutional limits of government without a better grasp of the Minnesota and
Federal Constitutions than evidenced by Marty’s ‘Leadership Plan for Minnesota.’”
“The integrity of the Republican positions on parental school choice and the constitutional scope of
government are too important for the future of Minnesota to stand by and say nothing while a
gubernatorial candidate undermines a basic proposition of the Republican Platform and proposes
legislation that has already been declared unconstitutional.”
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Prepared and Paid for by Pat Anderson for Governor, P.O. Box 7036, St. Paul, MN 55107
