Opinion ID: 3064621
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Private Choice

Text: The Supreme Court has “drawn a consistent distinction between government programs that provide aid directly to religious schools, and programs of true private choice, in which government aid reaches religious schools only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals.” Zelman, 536 U.S. at 649 (citations omitted). Defendants argue that Section 1089, like other religiously neutral educational assistance programs the Supreme Court has found constitutional, is a “program of true private choice . . . and [is] thus constitutional.” Id. at 653. The nature of the choices provided under Section 1089, however, differs significantly in structure from those under educational assistance programs the Court has held to be “programs of true private choice.”13 Id. In each of those programs, the government “provid[ed] assistance directly” to parents or individual students, “who, in turn, direct[ed] the government aid to religious schools wholly as a result of their own genuine and independent private choice.” Id. at 652. Under the voucher program upheld in Zelman, for example, the state distributed tuition aid directly to eligible parents, who were free to use the aid to send their children to any participating public or private school, and those wishing their children to remain enrolled in public school received tutorial aid to accommodate that choice. Id. at 645. Under Section 1089, by contrast, the state does not provide aid directly to parents. Instead the aid is mediated first through taxpayers, and then through private scholarship pro13 See Zelman, 536 U.S. 639; Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills Sch. Dist., 509 U.S. 1 (1993) (upholding federal program providing sign-language interpreter to student attending Catholic school); Witters, 474 U.S. 481 (upholding state vocational assistance program paying state aid directly to student attending religious college); Mueller, 463 U.S. 388 (upholding state tax deduction available to parents for their children’s public and private school expenses). WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 4611 grams. Under Section 1089, all Arizona taxpayers are eligible for a tuition tax credit, and those whose tax liability is large enough to use the credit may apply it toward a contribution to any STO, regardless of whether that STO provides scholarships exclusively for use at religious schools. In turn, any Arizona parent who wishes to send her child to a private school may apply for a STO scholarship, provided that the child meets the STO’s eligibility criteria for the use of that scholarship. [12] Unlike parents’ choices under the program in Zelman, or aid recipients’ choices under other programs the Court has upheld, parents’ choices are constrained by those of the taxpayers exercising the discretion granted by Section 1089. For example, by choosing to give state-reimbursed money to the Catholic Tuition Organization of the Diocese of Phoenix, which plaintiffs allege to be the largest STO, taxpayers can make their portion of the program aid available only to parents who are willing to send their children to Catholic schools. Although anyone may form a new STO devoted to funding scholarships at secular private schools, Section 1089 prohibits taxpayers from earmarking contributions for their own children. Thus, it is taxpayers who decide which STOs to fund and, consequently, who is eligible to receive STOprovided scholarships according to the criteria of the designated STO. Defendants acknowledge the differences between parents’ choices under Section 1089 and those afforded under indirect aid programs that the Supreme Court has previously upheld. They contend, however, that because Section 1089 offers “genuine and independent choices” to the taxpayers who fund STOs, these differences are irrelevant to whether Section 1089 violates the Establishment Clause. We disagree.
The parties do not contest that notwithstanding its structural differences from indirect aid programs the Court has upheld, 4612 WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL Section 1089 would satisfy the Establishment Clause if the program made scholarships available to parents on a religiously neutral basis and gave them a true private choice as to where to utilize the scholarships. Plaintiffs allege, however, this is not how the program works in practice. In Zelman, the Court identified several circumstances relevant to whether the indirect aid program at issue, which gave tuition grants to parents to apply toward private and fee-charging public schools, was “a program of true private choice . . . and thus constitutional[:]” [T]he . . . program is neutral in all respects toward religion. It is part of a general and multifaceted undertaking . . . to provide educational opportunities to the children of a failed school district. It confers educational assistance directly to a broad class of individuals defined without reference to religion, i.e., any parent of a school-age child who resides in the . . . School District. The program permits the participation of all schools within the district, religious or nonreligious. Adjacent public schools also may participate and have a financial incentive to do so. Program benefits are available to participating families on neutral terms, with no reference to religion. The only preference stated anywhere in the program is a preference for low-income families, who receive greater assistance and are given priority for admission at participating schools. There are no financial incentives that skew the program toward religious schools. Such incentives are not present . . . where the aid is allocated on the basis of neutral, secular criteria that neither favor nor disfavor religion, and is made available to both religious and secular beneficiaries on a nondiscriminatory basis. Id. at 653-54 (emphasis added) (citations, alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 4613 y13Under this rubric, Section 1089 falls short. The vast majority of the scholarship money under the program — over 85 percent as of the time of plaintiffs’ complaint — is available only for use at religious schools.14 Because this aid is available only to parents who are willing to send their children to a religious school, the program fails to “confer[ ] educational assistance directly to a broad class of individuals defined without reference to religion.” Id. at 653. Moreover, because a disproportionate amount of the program aid is earmarked for use at religious schools before parents receive the aid, Section 1089 is not, from the parents’ perspective, “neutral in all respects toward religion” and does not equally “permit[ ] the participation of all schools . . . religious or nonreligious” in the program. Id. Additionally, because Section 1089 does not make aid equally available to parents “on the basis of neutral, secular criteria that neither favor nor disfavor religion,” id. (alterations in original) (quoting Witters, 474 U.S. at 487-88), the program creates “ ‘financial incentive[s]’ ” for parents that “ ‘ske[w]’ the program toward religious schools.” Id. (quoting Witters, 474 U.S. at 487-88); see Zobrest, 509 U.S. at 10 (upholding program because it “create[d] no financial incentive for parents to choose a sectarian school”). Thus, parents who wish to place their children in a private secular school, but who could not otherwise afford to do so, are at a disadvantage compared to parents who are willing to accept a scholarship for private religious schooling — 14 We recognize the Supreme Court in Mueller, 463 U.S. at 401, cautioned that such statistics lack constitutional import when a law is facially neutral. This case is different from Mueller, however, because Section 1089 does not allocate scholarship funds based on parents’ choices of schools, but instead mediates financial aid through taxpayers’ allocations to scholarship programs of their choice. As a result, a parent seeking scholarship aid does not have a “genuine and independent private choice” under the program because the parent’s choices are constrained by those of taxpayers. Zelman, 536 U.S. at 652. Facts showing the skewed concentration of funds in sectarian school scholarship programs would therefore support the claim that parents are financially incentivized to choose a religious school. 4614 WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL either by choice or out of financial necessity. Although parents would, of course, have the option of leaving their children in public school, we reject the suggestion that the mere existence of the public school system guarantees that any scholarship program provides for genuine private choice. For parents wait-listed for scholarships to secular schools,15 the range of educational choices the STO-administered scholarship programs offer do not realistically include “obtain[ing] a scholarship and choos[ing] a nonreligious private school.” Zelman, 536 U.S. at 655. Section 1089, as applied, thereby creates incentives that pressure these parents into accepting one of the scholarships that are readily available under the program for use at a religious school. Therefore, Section 1089, as applied, “fails to provide genuine opportunities for . . . parents to select secular educational options for their school-age children.” Id.
Defendants argue that despite this failure, Section 1089 does not violate the Establishment Clause because it provides a tax credit to all Arizona taxpayers, without respect to religion, and gives taxpayers a genuine choice between directing their money to religious or secular STOs. Therefore, as Zelman requires, “government aid reaches religious schools only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals.” Id. at 649. Plaintiffs do not contest that Section 1089 is neutral with respect to the taxpayers who direct money to STOs, or that any of the program’s aid that reaches 15 Data in the record, the veracity of which defendants do not challenge, show that in 2004, the Arizona School Choice Trust — the largest of the STOs that provides scholarships to any private secular or religious school — reported a waiting list of at least 700 students. If accurate, it would be the kind of information that would further support plaintiffs’ allegation that “parents choosing to send their children to non-religious, non-public schools may be unable to locate an STO willing and able to make a tuition grant to a student attending the non-religious school of the parents’ choice.” WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 4615 a STO does so only as a result of the genuine and independent choice of an Arizona taxpayer. See Mueller, 463 U.S. at 39899. Plaintiffs argue, however, that Section 1089 violates the Establishment Clause precisely because the individual taxpayers’ choices available under the program serve to restrict parents’ opportunities to select secular educational options for their school-age children, skewing parents’ incentives to send their children to religious schools. As such, the program is not “neutral in all respects toward religion” and, concomitantly, is not a “program of true private choice.” Zelman, 536 U.S. at 653. Defendants argue that it is irrelevant, under Zelman, whether an indirect aid program offers true private choice to parents, or instead, like Section 1089, offers true private choice to another broadly defined class of individuals. In describing what constitutes “true private choice,” however, the Court in Zelman frequently emphasized that the choice is one offered, on a neutral basis, to parents or students, as the beneficiaries of the program’s aid. See, e.g., id. at 652 (“A program . . . [like those the Court has upheld] permits government aid to reach religious institutions only by way of the deliberate choices of numerous individual recipients.”); id. at 653 (concluding one of the features of “true private choice” in the Ohio voucher program is that “[p]rogram benefits are available to participating families on neutral terms”); id. at 669 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (“Courts are instructed to consider two factors: first, whether the program administers aid in a neutral fashion, without differentiation based on the religious status of beneficiaries or providers of services; second, and more importantly, whether beneficiaries of indirect aid have a genuine choice among religious and nonreligious organizations when determining the organization to which they will direct that aid.”). Defendants contend this emphasis is simply because parental choice was the only private choice offered under those programs. Defendants’ argument, however, disregards the Court’s analysis of how the true private choice described in Zelman 4616 WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ensures that government aid flowing to religious institutions does not have “the forbidden ‘effect’ of advancing . . . religion,’ ” id. at 649, even though the aid would have such an effect under a program of direct funding. See Bowen, 487 U.S. at 609-10 (noting “direct government aid” impermissibly advances religion “if the aid flows to institutions that are ‘pervasively sectarian’ ”). The function of true private choice, the Court explained, is to eliminate the perception that the government is endorsing religion through the money that is channeled to sectarian institutions: “The incidental advancement of a religious mission, or the perceived endorsement of a religious message, is reasonably attributable to the individual recipient, not to the government, whose role ends with the disbursement of benefits.” Zelman, 536 U.S. at 652. The Court expressly linked its “true private choice” analysis to the “reasonable observer” inquiry as to whether the government is perceived to endorse the religious organizations that benefit from its aid. See id. at 655 (holding, with respect to the parental choice the Court was addressing, that “no reasonable observer would think a neutral program of private choice, where state aid reaches religious schools solely as a result of the numerous independent decisions of private individuals, carries with it the imprimatur of government endorsement”). In drawing this link, the Court adopted Justice O’Connor’s position in Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U.S. 793 (2000), that “ ‘[i]n terms of public perception, a government program of direct aid to religious schools . . . differs meaningfully from the government distributing aid directly to individual students who, in turn, decide to use the aid at the same religious schools.’ ” Zelman, 536 U.S. at 655 (quoting Mitchell, 530 U.S. at 84243 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment)). Under this framework, the question central to the endorsement inquiry is whether “the reasonable observer would naturally perceive the aid program [in question] as government support for the advancement of religion.” Mitchell, 530 U.S. at 843 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment) (discussing effect of programs providing direct aid to religious schools). WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 4617 “ ‘[T]he reasonable observer in th[is] endorsement inquiry must be deemed aware’ of the ‘history and context’ underlying a challenged program.” Zelman, 536 U.S. at 655 (quoting Good News Club v. Milford Cent. Sch., 533 U.S. 98, 119 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Capitol Square Review and Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 773 (1995) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“[T]he endorsement test necessarily focuses upon the perception of a reasonable, informed observer.”) (emphasis added). We impute this knowledge to the reasonable observer because “the endorsement inquiry is not about the perceptions of particular individuals or saving isolated nonadherents from . . . discomfort,” but instead concerns “the political community writ large.” Id. at 779; accord Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 119 (adopting this position); see also Capitol Square, 515 U.S. at 779-80 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“[T]he applicable observer is similar to the ‘reasonable person’ in tort law, who is not to be identified with any ordinary individual, who might occasionally do unreasonable things, but is rather a personification of a community ideal of reasonable behavior, determined by the [collective] social judgment.”) (internal quotation marks omitted; alteration in original). [14] Accordingly, to assess whether the taxpayer choice offered under Section 1089 has the same constitutional effect as the parental choice Zelman upheld, we must consider the Court’s application of the reasonable observer inquiry to the program at issue in that case. Specifically, we must consider the circumstances the Court deemed relevant to why a reasonable, informed observer looking at the program upheld in Zelman would conclude that “[t]he incidental advancement of a religious mission, or the perceived endorsement of a religious message” resulting from a program “is reasonably attributable to the individual recipient, not to the government, whose role ends with the disbursement of benefits.” 536 U.S. at 652. The Court’s guidance in earlier cases also sheds light on two cir4618 WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL cumstances that seemed particularly important to the reasonable observer analysis in Zelman. First, a reasonable, informed observer would consider what role the person making the choice occupies in the structure of the program. See Larkin v. Grendel’s Den, Inc., 459 U.S. 116, 127 (1982) (holding statute allowing a church or school to veto a liquor license for establishments in their proximity violated the Establishment Clause); Zelman, 536 U.S. at 652. In Larkin, the Court determined there was no “ ‘effective means of guaranteeing’ ” the veto power delegated to churches over liquor licenses “ ‘[would] be used exclusively for secular, neutral, and nonideological purposes.’ ” Id. at 125 (quoting Nyquist, 413 U.S. at 780).16 “In addition,” the Court continued, “the mere appearance of a joint exercise of legislative authority by Church and State provides a significant symbolic benefit to religion in the minds of some by reason of the power conferred.” Id. at 125-26. Of course, the delegation of scholarship funding to individual taxpayers, such as in Section 1089, does less to promote religion than the delegation of zoning authority to churches. Larkin’s holding, however, illustrates that when a statute delegates “a power ordinarily vested in agencies of government” to a private party, see id. at 122, without reasonable assurance that the party’s choices will advance the secular purposes of the statute, any ensuing “perceived endorsement of a religious message” may be “reasonably attribut[ed]” to the government. See Zelman, 536 U.S. at 652. 16 In Zelman, the Court held “Nyquist does not govern neutral educational assistance programs that, like the program here, offer aid directly to a broad class of individual recipients defined without regard to religion.” 536 U.S. at 662. As discussed above, Section 1089 does not “offer aid directly to individual recipients,” but rather mediates the aid through taxpayers and STOs. Insofar as Section 1089 is not a “program of true private choice,” within the meaning of Zelman, the Court’s holding in Nyquist is relevant to determining whether a reasonable observer would conclude the tax credit program endorses religion. WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 4619 By contrast, the educational assistance programs addressed in Zelman were structured so that parents were permitted to choose how to best use the program aid to assist their children. The parents’ decisive role in the program gave them incentives to apply the program’s aid based on their children’s educational interests instead of on sectarian considerations, such as whether to promote the religious mission of a particular school. Accordingly, by delegating a choice that “ensured that parents were the ones to select a religious school as the best learning environment” for their children, the government did not appear to endorse religion. Id. (stating how federal special education program providing sign-language interpreter to student attending Catholic school ensured that “the circuit between government and religion was broken, and the Establishment Clause was not implicated”). Second, a reasonable, informed observer would consider whether the choice delegated under a program has the effect of promoting, or hindering, the program’s secular purpose. See id. at 655. In Larkin, the Court recognized that the statute delegating veto power to churches and schools had the valid secular purpose of “protect[ing] spiritual, cultural, and educational centers from the ‘hurly-burly’ associated with liquor outlets.” 459 U.S. at 123 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court noted, however, that “these valid secular objectives can be readily accomplished by other means,” id. at 123-24, and that the veto power conferred by the statute could “be used by churches to promote goals beyond insulating the church from undesirable neighbors,” id. at 125. The Court concluded that the delegation could “be seen as having a ‘primary’ and ‘principal’ effect of advancing religion.” Id. at 126. Similarly, in Nyquist, the Court invalidated a program providing tuition grants and tax credits to parents sending their children to private schools because, although the program had a valid secular purpose, “the effect of the aid [wa]s unmistakably to provide desired financial support for nonpublic, sectarian institutions.” 413 U.S. at 783; see id. at 788 (“In its attempt to enhance the opportunities of the poor to choose 4620 WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL between public and nonpublic education, the State has taken a step which can only be regarded as one ‘advancing’ religion.”). Nyquist illustrates that if an educational assistance program provides individual choice through tax credits, but those tax credits hinder the program’s ability to achieve its valid secular goals, a reasonable observer could well conclude that the tax credits are simply masking an Establishment Clause violation. Cf. Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. at 93-94 (discussing school desegregation cases invalidating use of tuition grants and tax credits to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)); see also Bd. of Educ. of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet, 512 U.S. 687, 690 (1994) (invalidating statute creating school district coextensive with religious community that had valid purpose of providing special education services, but was unnecessarily tailored to promote sectarian aims); Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 465 (1973) ( “[I]t is . . . axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”) (internal quotation marks omitted) (invalidating state program providing textbooks to racially discriminatory private schools). [15] The choices delegated to parents under Zelman, by contrast, may have advanced — and at least did not thwart — the secular purpose of the program, which was to “provid[e] educational assistance to poor children in a demonstrably failing public school system.” 536 U.S. at 649. The best educational environment for a particular child within a failed school system may depend on qualitative considerations that could not easily be assessed at a policymaking level. See, e.g., id. at 674-75 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (suggesting metrics other than formal academic achievement that may play a role in parents’ educational choices in a failed school district). The choice offered under the program may have therefore helped ensure that the program achieved its secular aims by delegating funding decisions to a class of persons — parents — who were better positioned than a state policymaking body to WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 4621 make educational choices for individual students in a failing school system. [16] Drawing upon these two circumstances — the role the person making the choice occupies in the structure of a program and whether delegating the choice promotes the secular purpose of the program — we turn to defendants’ argument that the individual, taxpayer choice provided under Section 1089 necessarily has the same constitutional effect as the parental choice upheld in Zelman. Under Section 1089, individual taxpayers may constrain the scholarship options of other parents’ children by choosing to direct their statereimbursed contributions to sectarian STOs. Yet unlike parents, whose choices directly affect their children, taxpayers have no structural incentives under Section 1089 to direct their contributions primarily for secular reasons, such as the academic caliber of the schools to which a STO restricts aid, rather than for sectarian reasons, such as the religious mission of a particular STO. Thus, the taxpayers’ position in the structure of Section 1089 provides no “ ‘effective means of guaranteeing’ ” that taxpayers will refrain from using the program for sectarian purposes. Larkin, 459 U.S. at 125 (quoting Nyquist, 413 U.S. at 780). Significantly, plaintiffs’ allegations suggest the taxpayers’ role in the structure of Section 1089, as applied, encourages them to use the tax credits to promote sectarian goals, and that taxpayers have in fact used the program aid to this end. [17] Relatedly, the taxpayer choice provided under Section 1089 does little to advance — indeed, it appears to thwart — the secular purpose of the program, which is to provide equal access to a wide range of schooling options for students of every income level by defraying the costs of educational expenses incurred by parents.17 Defendants do not suggest 17 Even if we assumed that taxpayer choice does, in some respect, advance the secular objectives of Section 1089, plaintiffs may be able to demonstrate that “these valid secular objectives can be readily accomplished by other means,” and therefore that the program nevertheless “could be seen as having a ‘primary’ and ‘principal’ effect of advancing religion.” Larkin, 459 U.S. at 123-24, 126. 4622 WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL taxpayers are better positioned than government administrators to allocate program aid in a manner that will expand schooling options, and plaintiffs’ allegations suggest the demand for STO-provided scholarships available for use at secular schools markedly outstrips their supply. This misalignment between parents’ interests and taxpayers’ desires suggests that by vesting individual taxpayers with funding authority, Section 1089’s design works against its purpose of providing Arizona students with equal access to a wide range of schooling options. Although Section 1089 leaves individual parents free to create new STOs that cater to their educational preferences, this freedom provides little benefit to parents who do not have the time or capital to get others to support their STO, given that these parents cannot use their tax credits to fund scholarships for their own children. [18] Accordingly, we conclude that there is a meaningful constitutional distinction between the individual, taxpayer choice provided under Section 1089 and the parental choice upheld in Zelman.18 Section 1089, as claimed to operate in practice, is not a program of true private choice, immune from further constitutional scrutiny. We therefore hold that plaintiffs have alleged facts upon which a reasonable, informed observer could conclude that Section 1089, as applied, violates the Establishment Clause even though the state does not directly decide whether any particular sectarian organizations will receive program aid. 18 In Green v. Garriott, ___ P.3d ___, 2009 WL 623346 (Ariz. Ct. App. March 12, 2009), the Arizona Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision rejected an Establishment Clause challenge to Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 43-1183, which gives dollar-for-dollar tax credits to corporations for contributions to STOs. The Green majority did not consider, as we do here, whether any lack of religious neutrality in the actual operation of Section 1183 “carries with it the imprimatur of government endorsement,” Zelman, 536 U.S. at 655, and we are unpersuaded by the analysis of whether § 1183 is a program of “true private choice” for the reasons we have already discussed at length. WINN v. ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 4623 The district court’s order dismissing plaintiffs’ complaint is reversed and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. REVERSED and REMANDED for further proceedings.