A law passed by the 2023 DFL-controlled Minnesota Legislature that bars certain religious colleges and universities from participating in the state’s 40-year-old Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program has been ruled unconstitutional.
Prior to the ruling, the state issued an injunction that prevented officials from enforcing the new law while the legal process was ongoing, allowing Crown College in St. Bonifacius and the University of Northwestern-St. Paul in Roseville — plaintiffs in the lawsuit — to keep serving PSEO students. As of 2021 data, the University of Northwestern-St. Paul was Minnesota’s largest PSEO provider.
As I previously wrote here, the provision was included in the 2023 education omnibus bill and barred religious colleges or universities that require students to sign a statement of faith from participating in the state’s popular PSEO program, which allows eligible high school students to earn college credit at a public or private institution located in Minnesota. The program is voluntary and students can choose from a number of colleges and universities that participate. Courses offered have always had to be nonsectarian.
The restrictive language was removed by the Senate on a bipartisan vote — two DFL senators in swing districts voted with Republicans to protect the popular program for religious colleges — but the conference committee ignored this bipartisan amendment and reverted to the original language.
The Minnesota Department of Education defended the change and had been pushing for the exclusionary language since 2019, according to KARE 11.
With the help of Becket, a public interest legal and educational institution, Minnesota “families and schools challenged the law in federal court to stop Minnesota from punishing religious students and the faith-based schools they want to attend because they are religious.”
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel agreed in her ruling issued late Friday that the law was an unconstitutional violation of religious freedom.
“This dispute requires the court to venture into the delicate constitutional interplay of religion and publicly-funded education,” Brasel wrote.
Based on previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Brasel noted that she was heeding the High Court’s instruction that the First Amendment “gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations” — states are not required to subsidize private education, but once they do, they can’t disqualify some private schools “solely because they’re religious.”
Brasel’s decision marks the second time in a week a judge has found a state law passed by the DFL-controlled legislature during its “trifecta” to be unconstitutional.
