Six conservative justices handed Christians a landmark victory in 2022 and told Maine its war on religious schools was over.
Maine's Democrat officials had already written the next battle before the ink dried.
Last week, a federal appeals court handed them the win – and now a Christian school in Bangor must choose between its Bible and its students.
Maine Used School Choice Funding to Force Gender Ideology on a Christian School
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld a Maine law requiring Bangor Christian Schools to comply with the state's LGBT anti-discrimination rules as a condition of participating in Maine's school choice program.
The ruling came in Crosspoint Church v. Makin, decided by a two-judge panel – one judge died before the opinion was issued. Circuit Judge William Kayatta wrote the opinion.
Under the Maine Human Rights Act, Bangor Christian Schools now faces civil suits from the Maine Human Rights Commission and private individuals – including monetary damages and injunctive relief – if it enforces its biblical standards on gender and sexuality.
That means if a male student declared himself transgender and demanded access to female restrooms, the school could not enforce its own code of conduct.
Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, which represented Crosspoint Church, said Maine had effectively redefined the First Amendment.
"Essentially what the court has said is that you can believe what you want to believe, you can talk about what you believe, but once you exercise what you believe, that's conduct that the state of Maine can regulate," Dys said.
He called the ruling a betrayal of what the Constitution actually promises. "As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said, punishing religious institutions for being religious is odious to our Constitution."
Maine Attorney General Called Christian Education Inimical Before Carson v Makin Was Even Decided
Maine saw the Supreme Court ruling coming.
In 2022, a 6-3 Court struck down Maine's old policy in Carson v. Makin, ruling that the state's ban on tuition assistance for religious schools violated the Free Exercise Clause.
Before that ruling even landed, the Maine legislature amended its law – not to comply with the First Amendment, but to route around it.
The new version let religious schools into the tuition program, but buried a poison pill inside: full compliance with LGBT anti-discrimination rules. The choice Maine built into the law: abandon biblical standards, or forfeit public funding for the families the school serves.
In 2023, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey made clear this was not an accident.
"The education provided by the schools at issue here is inimical to a public education," Frey said. "They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff."
That quote was not a legal argument. It was a declaration of contempt for Christianity itself.
First Liberty Institute Plans Supreme Court Appeal After First Circuit Religious Freedom Ruling
First Liberty is reviewing whether to appeal to the full First Circuit or go directly to the Supreme Court. In either case, Dys said: "We're going to seek further review."
The legal path is well-worn. The Supreme Court has now ruled three times in a row against government entities that tried to block Christian schools from generally available public programs – Trinity Lutheran in 2016, Espinoza v. Montana in 2019, and Carson v. Makin in 2022. Each time, the Court delivered the same verdict: you cannot single out religious institutions for exclusion.
Maine's argument to the First Circuit was that its new law was neutral and generally applicable – the same legal standard the Supreme Court has been dismantling for a decade. District Judge John Woodcock ruled against Bangor Christian in 2024. The First Circuit panel agreed.
The Supreme Court may see it very differently.
Maine lost at the highest court in the country on religious discrimination. Rather than comply, it rewrote the discrimination with different paperwork and dared the courts to catch it again.
The families at Bangor Christian Schools were at the center of Carson v. Makin – they fought for years to win the right to access funding every other family in their district receives. Maine answered that victory by attaching a condition designed to make that funding unusable.
First Liberty calls it a poison pill. There is a simpler word for it: contempt.
Sources:
- Joshua Arnold, "Court Rules Maine Christian School Has to Push LGBTQ Agenda on Kids," The Washington Stand, July 9, 2026.
- First Liberty Institute, "Federal Court Upholds Maine Laws Forcing Religious Schools to Adopt State's Gender Ideology," firstliberty.org, July 7, 2026.
- The Maine Wire, "Appeals Court Rules Against Maine Christian School in Religious Freedom Lawsuit," July 10, 2026.
- The Heritage Foundation, "Supreme Court Tells Maine to Stop Religiously Discriminating. Maine Gets Creative, Does It Anyway," heritage.org.
- Christian Post, "Christian Schools Must Follow State LGBT Policies to Qualify for Tuition Program: Appeals Court," July 7, 2026.
