California attempts to cut aid to students at religious schools

Daniel Blomberg

A bill (SB 1146) now pending in the California legislature will cut aid for students attending certain private religious colleges. The bill follows last year’s failed attempt to cut grants for all private colleges. While the religious schools have high 4-year graduation rates, the attack the bill, if passed, will force many minority and low-income students into the California State University system which graduates only about 9 percent of minority students.  

“SB 1146 represents politics at its worst,” says Montserrat Alvarado of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “Whatever the political spin, the reality is that SB 1146 directly harms California’s most vulnerable students—many of whom are the first in their families to go to college—and will cost California taxpayers hundreds of millions.”

SB 1146 will most severely harm California’s African-American and Latino students. Such students disproportionately come from communities that are both deeply religious and financially disadvantaged. They enjoy very high rates of success at religious colleges like Fresno Pacific University, which graduates 60 percent of African-Americans and 70 percent of Latinos within 4 years. But by comparison, the California State University system—where most poor minorities would be funneled if SB 1146 passes—manages to graduate only about 9 percent of African Americans and Latinos in 4 years. 

On hand to discuss this matter Tuesday will be Attorney Daniel Blomberg of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Before joining Becket, he clerked for Chief Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and, before that, served as litigation counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. He has been featured on CNN's The Leader with Jake Tapper, Fox News's On the Record with Great Van Susteren, Fox Business's Cavuto Coast to Coast, Huffington Post Live, EWTN Nightly News, and CBS Evening News.

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