Maine Town Tuitioning Program

Students must live in Maine and reside in a designated sending town that does not have a public school at their grade level. Public schools that receive participating students set their tuition rate and are paid by the sending town. Payments for private school elementary schools may not exceed the statewide average per-pupil statewide cost. The rate for secondary students is based on the previous year’s statewide average per-pupil secondary cost, plus an additional amount to cover building depreciation. Parents may supplement town funds with their own funds. The value of a town’s voucher varies by county, reflecting per-student funding levels. Sending towns may enhance the voucher up to a maximum of 115% of the per-student funding amount but cannot reduce it below the state-set tuition rates. 

Funding Mechanism: Sending towns pay tuition directly to the receiving schools. 

Honorable Mention Fact: Maine’s town tuitioning program is the nation’s second-oldest private school choice program after Vermont’s Town Tuitioning program. 

Universal Eligibility: ❌
Universal Usage: ❌
Universal Funding: ✅
Truly Universal: ❌

(Last updated December 16, 2025)

Qualifying expenses include tuition, fees, and transportation.

(Last updated December 16, 2025)

View program requirements for parents, schools, and scholarship granting organizations by clicking on each hyperlink.

(Last updated December 16, 2025)

Maine Rev. Stat. 20-A §§ 2951-55 and 5203-06

(Last updated July 31, 2023) 

On January 7, 1980, Maine Attorney General Richard S. Cohen released an opinion in response to a question posed by State Senator Howard Trotzky, who asked whether the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment “allows individuals [students] in school administrative districts to attend privately operated religious schools at public expense?” Although students had attended religious and secular private schools through public funding since 1873, General Cohen opined that funding a child to attend a school with a “pervasively religious atmosphere” would be unconstitutional, and since it is not possible to examine each school to determine whether it is pervasively sectarian, children accessing Maine’s Town Tuitioning voucher program could no longer attend religious schools. Me. Op. Att’y Gen. No. 80-2 (Jan. 7, 1980). 

On June 14, 1993, the Maine Supreme Court upheld the home rule authority of towns over school budgets (impacting town tuitioning), holding that municipalities maintain some authority over education policy. School Committee of York v. York, 626 A.2d 935 (Me. 1993). 

On April 23, 1999, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld the exclusion of religious schools and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review. Since the mid-1980s, there have been many challenges regarding the exclusion of religious schools. Bagley v. Raymond School Department, 728 A.2d 127 (Me.), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 947 (1999).  

On May 27, 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the ruling of the lower court that religious school exclusion was constitutional. Strout v. Commissioner, Maine Department of Education, 178 F.3d 57 (1st Cir. 1999). 

On October 22, 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit disagreed with the lower court’s reasoning but agreed that Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from Town Tuitioning did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Eulitt v. Maine Department of Education, 386 F.3d 344 (1st Cir. 2004). 

On April 26, 2006, despite the U.S. Supreme Court in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (see OHIO) upholding the constitutionality of vouchers with inclusion of religious schools in Cleveland, Maine’s Supreme Judicial court refused to overturn Maine’s 1981 law excluding religious schools from Town Tuitioning, stating the state was not compelled to offer direct or indirect tuition payments to sectarian schools. Anderson v. Town of Durham, 895 A.2d 944 (Me. 2006), cert. denied, 127 S.Ct. 661, 166 L.Ed.2d 512.  

On July 1, 2008, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court expanded upon its 2006 ruling in Anderson (above) and held that the law excluding religious schools from Town Tuitioning also applied to municipalities that may consider offering a general fund subsidy for tuition at a sectarian school. Joyce v. State, 951 A.2d 69 (Me. 2008). 

On October 21, 2018, multiple families filed a federal civil rights action against Maine for violating their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, by prohibiting them from choosing religious schools of their choice for their children using the state’s Town Tuitioning voucher funding. The U.S. District Court applied the Eulitt decision (see above) in ruling against parents on June 26, 2019. Carson v. Makin, 401 F.Supp.3d 207 (D. Me. 2019). 

The decision was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals and on October 29, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that Maine has a right to deny funding for a child’s tuition at a school where religion is part of the school instructional day. The Court distinguished this case from Espinoza (see MONTANA) by opining that Espinoza involved a violation of the Free Exercise Clause, whereas allowing state funds to be used for education at a religious school using funds in part for religious activities and instruction would be a violation of the Establishment Clause. Carson v. Makin, 979 F.3d 21 (1st Cir. 2020). 

On July 2, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted appeal of Carson v. Makin on Writ of Certiorari from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The question presented to the Court was, “Does a state violate the Religion Clauses or Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution by prohibiting students participating in an otherwise generally available student-aid program from choosing to use their aid to attend schools that provide religious, or ‘sectarian,’ instruction? This case began as an effort to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court Espinoza decision (see MONTANA) prohibiting states from denying parents, using school choice funding, the right to use those funds at religious schools. When Maine rejected Espinoza, stating that religious schools were only excluded from their town tuitioning voucher program if the school used voucher funds for religious purposes or instruction, the state’s position was upheld by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which led to the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

On June 21, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin held that it is a violation of the U.S. Constitution for a state to prohibit choice of a religious private school by a parent using school choice program funding. When a state prohibits a parent from using school choice program funding at a religious school, based on either, a) the status of the school as a religious school (as affirmed in Espinoza, see “MONTANA” below), or b) the school’s use of school choice funding from the parent for religious activity or instruction during an instructional day, the state has violated the parent’s First Amendment religious rights. Carson v. Makin, 596 U.S. _ (2022) 

(Last updated December 6, 2023)