BANGOR, Maine (AP) Maine families who want public funding to send their children to religious schools are going to federal court.

National conservative groups that have brought forward religious freedom cases in other states are representing three families that filed a federal lawsuit in Bangor Tuesday. The families seek a court order that declares Maine’s school tuition program unconstitutional for discriminating against their religious convictions.

Maine communities without their own high school must either contract with public or private schools, or pay tuition at a school of parents’ choice. Religious schools can’t receive such tuition payments, and the lawsuit aims to require future tuition payments.

The suit says none of the families have asked for tuition payments for religious schools because such requests would be “futile.”

The state Department of Education declined comment.