On March 10th Senator Brandon Creighton sent the Attorney General a request for an opinion (RQ-0502-KP) regarding the constitutionality of Texas’s “Blaine Amendments” and the constitutionality of a Texas Education Savings Account (ESA) program. Creighton concluded his ask with three questions for consideration and asked for an expedited issuance of the written opinion:
(1) Do Texas’s Blaine Amendments violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
(2) Would an ESA program that makes available education assistance payments to program participants, including for sectarian schools and tutors, violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
(3) Would an ESA program that makes available education assistance payments to program participants in order to achieve a general diffusion of knowledge violate Article VII, § 1 or Article VII, § 5 of the Texas Constitution?