Ariella Hellman, on Their Own Behalf and as Next Friend of Their Child, E. H., et al. v. Katherine Craven, Chair, Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, et al.

The unconstitutional conditions doctrine forbids the government from conditioning an otherwise available benefit on the surrender of a constitutional right. Over a century’s worth of cases, this Court has invalidated numerous conditions that exert the kind of indirect “coercive pressure” that results when the government denies a benefit to a person “because he exercises a constitutional right.” Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist., 570 U.S. 595, 604, 607–08 (2013) (citation omitted). In the decision below, the First Circuit recognized that this prohibition on “indirect coercion” exists but held it to be a “distinct” First Amendment principle that does not extend to the fundamental right, recognized in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), to send one’s children to private school. On that basis, it upheld an agency’s denial of statutorily guaranteed special education services to children whose parents send them to a private school. Applying rational basis review, it held the denial was justified by a state constitutional provision barring public money from “aiding” any “primary or secondary” private school. Mass. Const. amend. art. XVIII, § 2. The question presented is: Does the unconstitutional conditions doctrine apply to the right, recognized in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, to send one’s child to a private school?