Opinion ID: 109722
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Instructional Materials and Equipment

Text: Sections 3317.06 (B) and (C) authorize expenditures of funds for the purchase and loan to pupils or their parents upon individual request of instructional materials and instructional equipment of the kind in use in the public schools within the district and which is incapable of diversion to religious use. [15] Section 3317.06 also provides that the materials and equipment may be stored on the premises of a nonpublic school and that publicly hired personnel who administer the lending program may perform their services upon the nonpublic school premises when necessary for efficient implementation of the lending program. Although the exact nature of the material and equipment is not clearly revealed, the parties have stipulated: It is expected that materials and equipment loaned to pupils or parents under the new law will be similar to such former materials and equipment except that to the extent that the law requires that materials and equipment capable of diversion to religious issues will not be supplied. App. 36. [16] Equipment provided under the predecessor statute, invalidated as set forth in n. 1, supra, included projectors, tape recorders, record players, maps and globes, science kits, weather forecasting charts, and the like. The District Court, 417 F. Supp., at 1117, found the new statute, as now limited, constitutional because the court could not distinguish the loan of material and equipment from the textbook provisions upheld in Meek, 421 U. S., at 359-362, and in Allen, 392 U. S., at 248. In Meek, however, the Court considered the constitutional validity of a direct loan to nonpublic schools of instructional material and equipment, and, despite the apparent secular nature of the goods, held the loan impermissible. MR. JUSTICE STEWART, in writing for the Court, stated: The very purpose of many of those schools is to provide an integrated secular and religious education; the teaching process is, to a large extent, devoted to the inculcation of religious values and belief. See Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S., at 616-617. Substantial aid to the educational function of such schools, accordingly, necessarily results in aid to the sectarian school enterprise as a whole. `[T]he secular education those schools provide goes hand in hand with the religious mission that is the only reason for the schools' existence. Within the institution, the two are inextricably intertwined.' Id., at 657 (opinion of BRENNAN, J.). 421 U. S., at 366. Thus, even though the loan ostensibly was limited to neutral and secular instructional material and equipment, it inescapably had the primary effect of providing a direct and substantial advancement of the sectarian enterprise. Appellees seek to avoid Meek by emphasizing that it involved a program of direct loans to nonpublic schools. In contrast, the material and equipment at issue under the Ohio statute are loaned to the pupil or his parent. In our view, however, it would exalt form over substance if this distinction were found to justify a result different from that in Meek. Before Meek was decided by this Court, Ohio authorized the loan of material and equipment directly to the nonpublic schools. Then, in light of Meek, the state legislature decided to channel the goods through the parents and pupils. Despite the technical change in legal bailee, the program in substance is the same as before: The equipment is substantially the same; it will receive the same use by the students; and it may still be stored and distributed on the nonpublic school premises. In view of the impossibility of separating the secular education function from the sectarian, the state aid inevitably flows in part in support of the religious role of the schools. Indeed, this conclusion is compelled by the Court's prior consideration of an analogous issue in Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756 (1973). There the Court considered, among others, a tuition reimbursement program whereby New York gave low-income parents who sent their children to nonpublic schools a direct and unrestricted cash grant of $50 to $100 per child (but no more than 50% of tuition actually paid). The State attempted to justify the program, as Ohio does here, on the basis that the aid flowed to the parents rather than to the church-related schools. The Court observed, however, that, unlike the bus program in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1 (1947), and the book program in Allen, there has been no endeavor `to guarantee the separation between secular and religious educational functions and to ensure that State financial aid supports only the former.' 413 U. S., at 783, quoting Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S., at 613. The Court thus found that the grant program served to establish religion. If a grant in cash to parents is impermissible, we fail to see how a grant in kind of goods furthering the religious enterprise can fare any better. [17] Accordingly, we hold §§ 3317.06 (B) and (C) to be unconstitutional. [18]