Opinion ID: 356147
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Church-State Entanglement Created By The Guidelines

Text: 29 Analysis under the third tier of the Establishment Clause standard reveals that the Board's guidelines foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. In Tilton v. Richardson, 1971, 403 U.S. 672, 91 S.Ct. 2091, 29 L.Ed.2d 790, an Establishment Clause case which permitted public aid to private religious universities, Chief Justice Burger's plurality opinion outlines three factors which have a relevant bearing on the analysis of the Board's guidelines. First, the Court pointed out that indoctrination is more likely where students are younger, less experienced, less skeptical, and more impressionable. The distribution efforts involved here are aimed at just such students those in elementary and secondary schools. These young children cannot help but be influenced by the school's approval of the presence of Gideon Bibles as being in itself an approval of Gideon doctrine, lest why else would the books be allowed. Second, the aid in the present case is clearly of an ideological nature the distribution of the Bible, an instrument of religion which cannot be gainsayed. Finally, the Court in Tilton warned against permitting aid of a continuing nature. In the present case the Gideons have made repeated visits to the schools and have even made a request, though tabled by the Board, to allow even further distribution efforts. 30 The Board may also find itself effectively defining religion or censoring the content of religious materials. With periodic announcement of the availability of each faith's literature allowed by the guidelines, the secular public school system could become the focal point for the competition of all religious beliefs. The Courts and other state officials would be under a continuing duty to make certain that one faith was not in effect being endorsed and promoted by its monopolistic use of the distribution network or by the tone or content of the school's periodic announcements. Indeed, it is ironic that the more fairly and objectively the guidelines are enforced, the more the school board will become immersed in serious religious judgments. 31 We hasten to add that without question a course in comparative religion would be constitutionally permissible. Nothing said above conflicts with the Supreme Court's pronouncement that (w)hile study of religions and of the Bible from a literary and historic viewpoint, presented objectively, as part of a secular program of, need not collide with the First Amendment's prohibition, the State may not adopt programs or practices in its public schools or colleges which aid or oppose any religion. Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968, 393 U.S. 97, 106, 89 S.Ct. 266, 271, 21 L.Ed.2d 228, 236. Here, however, we are not discussing a detached academic exercise. Instead, we are discussing massive dosages of religious literature to children of an impressionable age. The First Amendment's protection of the religious liberty of these children and of all beliefs alike compels me to find the Orange County school board's Bible distribution guidelines unconstitutional.