The New York Sun has a superb editorial about a back-room deal between the IRS and the Church of Scientology that allowed church members to to deduct at least 80 percent of fees paid for “religious training and services.” A Jewish coupled sued the IRS when deductions for their child’s “religious training and services” were rejected, a pretty clear violation of the Establishment Clause.
The editorial concludes,
But one of the things the courts are made for is abuses of the state power, and it certainly is starting to look like there has been an enormous one if the Internal Revenue Service is denying Jews, or Christians, or any other religion, the right to make deductions for religious education it is permitting to another group on the grounds that it is a religion. … Or in other words, one could make a giant leap forward in parental choice in the education of children, all in one judicial fell swoop.
