Military chaplain candidates denied financial aid due to their religious beliefs

Military chaplains have served honorably as indispensable members of the United States armed forces throughout American history. Military chaplains, whose role is significantly different from that of traditional religious leaders serving in their local communities, provide essential spiritual, emotional, and moral support to troops at home and overseas, as well as to their families and loved ones.

As important as chaplains are to the American military, though, public officials in Virginia denied aid to chaplain candidates at Liberty University who are also National Guard members under the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant Program and the Virginia National Guard State Tuition Assistance Program. Officials denied the financial aid because the plaintiffs hoped to pursue the religious education needed to become military chaplains.

After the three chaplain candidates unsuccessfully challenged Virginia’s action in Johnson v. Fleming, one appealed to the Fourth Circuit in a case with the same name, seeking to protect their rights to religious freedom to participate in the scholarship programs.

This column reviews the facts and judicial rationale in Johnson before offering analysis and commentary on its potential significance for religious freedom.

Johnson v. Fleming

Aware of the need to look after the spiritual well-being of his forces, one of George Washington’s first orders on achieving the rank of general was to call for the appointment of chaplains to perform “divine services” for his troops. Thus, on July 29, 1775, one of the Continental Congress’s first acts was to establish the chaplain corps, second only to the infantry as a branch of the military, with its motto “Pro Deo et Patria,” “For God and Country.”

Chaplains of all major faiths continue to serve the troops and their families by conducting religious services, offering spiritual guidance, as well as counseling, while helping individuals and their families through long separations, high stress, dangerous assignments, trauma, and loss.

Against this background, Virginia pays the salaries of chaplains called to active duty, requires individuals to “hold a master’s degree, at least 36 semester hours of which must be in Theology,” and provides tuition assistance for other religious coursework. Yet, as reflected in Johnson, Virginia denied aid to Guard members who wished to complete the educations they needed to serve as chaplains.

Three members of the National Guard who had hoped to become chaplains were denied aid when they requested financial tuition assistance under the Virginia programs identified above because their officials claimed their studies were “too religious.” The plaintiffs then unsuccessfully filed suit in a federal trial court in Virginia in June 2025.

They claimed that officials violated their rights under the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by treating them differently in denying them aid than other similarly situated members of the National Guard who wish to participate in the tuition assistance programs solely because their studies are religious in nature.

Ignoring more recent cases to the contrary, on March 31, 2026, the federal trial court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim by interpreting the Supreme Court’s judgment in Locke v. Davey as binding precedent because it had not explicitly overruled its decision. In Locke, the Justices upheld a student’s exclusion from Washington’s scholarship program for high achievers because he wished to pursue a degree in pastoral theology in violation of rules forbidding the use of funds to pay for those who wished to study for the ministry. The Court thought the law was constitutional because it was designed to avoid violating the First Amendment by establishing religion.

Disappointed but undaunted, Trace Stevens, the student in Johnson seeking a Master of Divinity Degree to become a chaplain, appealed to the Fourth Circuit, challenging the denial of his request to participate in the scholarship programs.

The court will conduct oral arguments this fall and likely render its judgment later this year.

Analysis and commentary

In Katcoff v. Marsh, a 1985 case from New York, the Second Circuit rejected the claims of two graduates of Harvard Law School alleging that Congressional action providing military chaplains enabling members of the Army, specifically, to practice the religions of their choice, violated the Establishment Clause. After acknowledging the key role that the chaplaincy has played in the United States military, beginning during the American Revolution (as noted earlier), the court observed that the Federal Government “owes [members of the military the] duty to satisfy their Free Exercise rights, especially since the failure to do so would diminish morale, thereby weakening our national defense.”

Virginia’s denial of aid to the plaintiff in the case before the Fourth Circuit, filed by plaintiff Trace Stevens over the relatively paltry reimbursements (around $2,000 to $3,000), seems unnecessary. Especially since officials are spending a great deal of public resources and energy, as well as garnering negative publicity. At the same time, Virginia is infringing on the religious freedom rights of the plaintiffs and others in ignoring the crucial, often heroic, role that chaplains have often had over the decades and centuries.

Equally confounding is the analysis of the federal trial court in denying aid to the chaplain candidates because “Locke to remain good law that is on-point . . . and thus binding authority compelling dismissal of all claims against the State Council Defendants” even in citing three recent Supreme Court cases upholding, in general, available aid to plaintiffs.

In fact, in the first of these cases, 2017’s Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, wherein the Justices overturned the denial of the application of a Christian Preschool to participate in a program to purchase playground surfaces made from recycled tires to enhance safety because it was faith-based, Court Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that “the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran Church from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.”

Three years later, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Supreme Court reasoned that because a tuition tax credit program allowing parents and others to save funds to pay for the education of their children in faith-based schools was permissible under the Establishment Clause, the state’s no-aid provision impermissibly discriminated against them based on religious status, insofar as it was narrower than the United States Constitution allows.

Finally, two years later, in Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court invalidated a provision in Maine law that required parents seeking to participate in its program for tuition assistance, only if they sent their child to a public or “nonsectarian” non-public school, because it violated the Free Exercise Clause. The Justices rejected the nonsectarian restriction because it was neither neutral toward religion nor did it afford parents the opportunity to send their children to the schools of their choice.

While the trial judge was correct that the Supreme Court has not explicitly overruled Locke (admittedly, a case from higher education, while its three later opinions dealt with pre-school through grade 12), legally this is a distinction without much of a difference, as it is based on First Amendment and Equal Protection analysis.

Consequently, on August 11, 2026, in Hall v. Fleming, the plaintiffs filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to overrule Locke because the Justices made it clear a new day had dawned on state aid to individuals and faith-based institutions, who can no longer be denied available financial assistance because of their religious beliefs.

It will be interesting to watch what happens. If Virgina’s actions are upheld, or the Supreme Court chooses not to intervene, then, regrettably, members of the military and their families may be denied the spiritual care they need. Hopefully, the courts will take this into account and undo this injustice. I plan to follow up on this case and story when either or both courts render their judgments.

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