Court Opinion

ID: 9691874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:22:03.347387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:27.646260
License: Public Domain

:SUMMERS, Justice
(dissenting).
This is a taxpayer’s suit challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s Secular Educational Services Act of 1970 providing for the purchase by the State of secular educational services from teachers employed by nonpublic schools and establishing procedures for the execution and regulation of contracts for such purchases.
Plaintiffs seek an injunction restraining the State Treasurer and Superintendent of Education from making any payments under the Act or the implementing legislation appropriating $10,000,000 for the current school year. See Acts 223 and 314 of 1970, Appendix A (La.R.S. 17:1321 et seq.). The trial court ordered defendants to show cause why the Acts should not be declared unconstitutional, and defendants answered seeking to uphold the validity of the Acts. Other citizens, taxpayers and teachers in qualified nonpublic ' schools intervened in support of the laws’ constitutionality.
All facts to be considered in deciding the question were stipulated in the trial court; and when all parties applied for certiorari, we ordered the record up under our plenary powers because of the avowed “crisis” in. the State’s educational program. State ex rel. Pearce v. Democratic State Central Committee, 229 La. 556, 86 So.2d 191 (1956); Long v. Martin, 194 La. 797, 194 So. 896 (1940).
Findings of fact, a declaration of necessity and a statement of public policy are contained in the basic Act (223 of 1970). It declares in grave and emphatic terms that a “crisis” exists with respect to the education of children in elementary and secondary schools as a result of unprecedented rising costs, the demand for improvement in the quality of education and the demand that more opportunities be made available for educating Louisiana children, including those being educated in nonpublic schools.
Certain of the financial aspects of this crisis in education in nonpublic schools are declared by the statute to be the direct result of state and local government taxation to support pay increases for public school teachers and to defray the costs of improved public school facilities. As a result, nonpublic schools have been reduc*1071ed to a noncompetitive position for the employment of qualified teachers of secular educational subjects. In some of its aspects the crisis in education, according to the legislative finding, is national in scope. Examples of this are stated to be the demand for excellence in all programs of instruction, the demand for the creation and implementation of innovative methods and techniques of teaching and the demand for improvement of teacher salary schedules to assure a high level of quality within the teacher corps itself.
Acknowledging that Louisiana’s literacy rate is among the lowest in the Nation, the legislation recognizes the need for continued concentrated efforts to raise the State’s educational level. It finds that elementary education is a public welfare purpose and that nonpublic education, through providing instruction in secular subjects, makes an important contribution to that purpose. Thus, it is concluded, this purpose may in part be fulfilled through governmental contracts for secular educational services provided by teachers in nonpublic schools.
Attendance of children at nonpublic schools constitutes compliance with the Louisiana Compulsory School Attendance law1 by the Act’s terms; and nonpublic schools in the State today, as during past years, bear the burden of educating fifteen percent of all elementary and secondary school pupils, a significant educational and economic contribution.
The Act declares, moreover, that it is in the public interest that all Louisiana children receive the best education its citizens can provide; and in order to accomplish this objective, the State has the right, the responsibility, the duty and obligation to provide financial assistance to qualified teachers of secular subjects in nonpublic schools by the purchase of their secular educational services.
The Superintendent of Education is charged with the administration of the Act, and he may contract for the purchase of secular educational services from school teachers teaching secular subjects to children enrolled in approved nonpublic schools. Payment under the Act is to be made directly to the teacher, not exceeding *1073the State scale paid to teachers in the public school system.
The “secular subjects” contemplated in the program mean any course of study in the curricula of the public schools, including, but not necessarily limited to, the teaching of mathematics, language arts, general and physical sciences, physical education, art and music, crafts and trades, home economics, or any other course of study in the curricula of the public schools, other- than those involving the teaching of religious beliefs or any form of worship of any sect or religion.
A special fund is established to administer the Act from which all expenses and disbursements are required to be made,
Rules and regulations authorized to be promulgated in connection with the Act provide that textbooks and all other instructional material used in secular courses shall be completely nonsectarian in nature. Payments are to be made to teachers holding a valid Louisiana teacher’s certificate and meeting all certification requirements of the State Board of Education. No teacher shall be paid except for the time spent teaching secular subjects, and no teacher who teaches religion on any school day can receive pay for that day. Likewise, services rendered while performing administrative duties at nonpublic schools are not compensable under the Act. In order to qualify, a nonpublic school must be supported “predominantly” from funds or property derived from nongovernmental sources. Thus teachers’ pay, like all other activities of nonpublic schools, are required to be financed “predominantly” from nongovernmental sources.
Benefits to nonpublic school teachers arc restricted to the salary supplement. No insurance, pension, training or other fringe benefits are available to them under the Act.
The stipulation of fact sets forth that sixty-five percent of the nonpublic schools are religious related and thirty-one percent are nonreligious. A substantial majority of the religious related schools of .the State are under the supervision and control of the Roman Catholic Church; and Catholic religious courses are taught in those schools by priests, brothers, nuns and laymen, Catholic and non-Catholic, who compose the faculties of those schools. In other religious related schools clergymen and laymen of various faiths compose the faculties.
Plaintiffs contend the Acts violate Article I, Section 4; Article IV, Section 8 and Article XII, Section 13, of the Louisiana Constitution and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution.
I.
Article I, Section 4, of the Louisiana Constitution contains the State’s Establish*1075ment Clause, the source of which is the almost verbatim language of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution. These constitutional provisions also embody the nearly identical Free Exercise Clauses of both Constitutions, but, since the Free Exercise Clauses have not been urged in argument or brief, I am confident they are not relied upon to sustain plaintiffs’ position. Accordingly, before considering the other State constitutional provisions relied upon by plaintiffs, I will consider the Act in the light of the Establishment Clauses of the State and Federal Constitutions. I do this at the outset, for the principles underlying these enactments to a certain extent pervade all issues presented in this suit.
The pertinent part of Article I, Section 4, of the State Constitution advanced in support of plaintiffs’ position declares, “No law shall be passed respecting an establishment of religion * * * ”, and the Federal First Amendment Clause is, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion * *
The First Amendment Establishment Clause has been made applicable to the states under judicial decisions which have been repeatedly reaffirmed beginning with Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 60 5.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940). Both establishment clauses, therefore, must be viewed in the light of the principles announced by the Federal Supreme Court in interpreting the Federal Establishment Clause. For under the Supremacy Qause of the Federal Constitution, all laws must, at the very least, conform with the mandates implicit in the Federal Establishment Clause.
Louisiana was in the vanguard of states which sought, with public funds, to improve education in public and nonpublic schools alike. In 1928 it appropriated money for the purchase of schoolbooks for the use of children in all the State’s schools, public, religious and private. These acts were upheld by this Court against attacks that they were violative of the State and Federal Constitutions in Borden v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 168 La. 1005, 123 So. 655 (1929) and Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 168 La. 1030, 123 So. 664 (1929), the latter case having been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 281 U.S. 370, 50 S.Ct. 335, 74 L.Ed. 913 (1930). Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, writing for the United States Supreme Court, adopted the language of Mr. Justice Rogers, the organ of this Court, when he wrote:
One may scan the acts in vain to ascertain where any money is appropriated for the purchase of school books for the use of any church, private, sectarian, or even public school. The appropriations were made for the specific purpose of purchasing school books for *1077the use of the school children of the state, free of cost to them. It was for their benefit and the resulting benefit of the state that the appropriations were made. True, these children attend some school, public or private, the latter, sectarian or nonsectarian, and that the books are to be furnished them for their use, free of cost, whichever they attend. The schools, however, are not the beneficiaries of these appropriations. They obtain nothing from them, nor are they relieved of a single obligation because of them. The school children and the state alone are the beneficiaries. It is also true that the sectarian schools, which some of the children attend, instruct their pupils in religion, and those books are used for that purpose, but one may search diligently the acts, though without result, in an effort to find anything to the effect that it is the purpose of the state to furnish religious books for the use of such children * * * What the statutes contemplate is that some books that are furnished children attending public schools shall be furnished children attending private schools. This is the only practical way of interpreting and executing the statutes, and this is what the state board of education is doing. Among these books, naturally, none is to be expected, adapted to religious instruction.
It was 1946 before the United States Supreme Court again decided a case presenting the same issue. Mr. Justice Black authored the majority opinion in a case involving the constitutionality of a New Jersey statute authorizing the reimbursement to parents of money expended by them for the bus transportation of their children on regular buses operated by the public transportation system. Part of this money was to pay the transportation of children attending Catholic parochial schools where children were given instruction in both secular and religious subjects. The act was challenged as violating the Due Process and Establishment Clauses of the Federal Constitution. See Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 67 S.Ct. 504, 91 L.Ed. 711 (1947). In declaring the contested Act constitutional, the Court recognized that the lessons of history made the need for separation of Church and State abundantly clear to the framers of the Constitution. This doctrine of separation, which the Establishment Clause supports, however, was not to be applied so severely that in protecting the citizens against state-established churches, the courts might “inadvertently prohibit New Jersey from extending its general state lazv benefits to all its citizens without regard to their religion or belief.” (Emphasis added.)
Observing that the denial of this assistance to church schools might make it more difficult for them to operate, the Court remarked that it was obviously not the purpose of the Establishment Clause to *1079hinder religious schools, since the State had no more right than the church to educate the State’s children. The Establishment Clause required “the state to be a neutral in its relation with groups of religious believers and non believers; it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used to handicap religions than it is to favor them.”
Until 1968 Everson remained the only United States Supreme Court case among the few establishment decisions which touched so directly itpon church related education.
The wholesome “neutrality” of which the Court speaks in Everson was in the interim to be defined more specifically in Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 222, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 1571, 10 L.Ed.2d 844 (1963), where the Court again held that the Establishment Clause withdrew legislative power respecting religious belief or the expression thereof. To decide if this requirement is met, the Court formulated this basis for the inquiry:
The test may be stated as follows: what are the purpose and the primary effect of the enactment? If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution. That is to say that to withstand the strictures of the Establishment Clause there must be a secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion.. (Emphasis added.)
Then, in Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1968), the Court had before it the constitutionality of an Act giving textbooks to children in religious schools. In applying ’the Schempp test the Court held that the federal constitutional provisions as to establishment and free exercise of religion were not violated, since (1) the statute merely made available to all children the benefits of a general program to lend schoolbooks free of charge; (2) books. were furnished at the request of the pupils, and ownership remained, at least technically, in the State; (3) no funds or books were furnished to parochial schools, and the financial benefit was to the parent and the children, not to schools; (4) only secular books, not religious books, could receive approval for loans; and (5) the statute was not alleged in any way to have coerced the plaintiffs as individuals in the practice of their religion.
Thus, the constitutional standard set by the First Amendment Establishment Clause and these cases is separation of Church and State. This problem, like many problems in constitutional law, is one of degree. Board of Education v. Allen, supra; Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 72 S.Ct. 679, 96 L.Ed. 954 (1952). See McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 *1081L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). The tests established by the cases are not easy to apply, but they require at least “neutrality” by the State in its program of assistance; that the program be “general”, not aimed at or against any group or sect; and, finally, there must be a “secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion.”
In applying these tests to the case at bar, I start with the fundamental and elementary principle long a part of our substantive law and without a proper respect for which the concept of separation of power might have a precarious existence in our constitutional scheme. Announced by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in 1810 the principle retains its vitality and strength to this day; it is:
The question, whether a law be void for its repugnancy to the constitution, is, at all times, a question of much delicacy, which ought seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in a doubtful case. The court, when impelled by duty to render such a judgment, would be unworthy of its station, could it be unmindful of the solemn obligations which that station imposes. But it is not on slight implication and vague conjecture that the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers, and its acts to be considered as void. The opposition between the constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of this incompatibility with each other. Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U. S. 87, 3 L.Ed. 162 (1810).
In adjudicating the issues in the instant case, recognition must also be given to the Louisiana requirement that any act of the legislature is presumed to be constitutional and that the Legislature acted only after a thorough investigation and upon a finding that the interest of the public required the legislation in question. Buras v. Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee, 248 La. 203, 177 So.2d 576 (1965); Banjavich v. Louisiana Licensing Bd. for Marine Divers, 237 La. 467, 111 So.2d 505 (1959); Board of Barber Examiners of Louisiana v. Parker, 190 La. 214, 182 So. 485 (1938). Those assailing the constitutionality have the burden of showing by clear and cogent evidence that the statute is unconstitutional. Everhardt v. City of New Orleans, 253 La. 285, 217 So.2d 400 (1969); Reynolds v. Louisiana Board of Alcoholic Bev. Con., 248 La. 639, 181 So.2d 377 (1966); Kansas City Southern Railway Co. v. Reily, 242 La. 235, 135 So. 2d 915 (1962). Moreover, any doubt must be resolved in favor of the validity of solemn expression of legislative will. Johnson v. Collector of Revenue, 246 La. 540, 165 So.2d 466 (1964); Police Jury of St. Charles Parish v. St. Charles Parish Waterworks Dist. No. 2, 243 La. 764, 146 So.2d 800 (1962); Orleans Parish School Bd. v. *1083Louisiana State Bd. of Ed., 215 La. 703, 41 So.2d 509 (1941).
Of course paying a supplemental salary to teachers in nonpublic schools is not reimbursement of bus fares to parents or furnishing schoolbooks to children in nonpublic schools; but the principle upon which one is justified is identical with the principle advanced to support the other, and no plausible distinction has been advanced which can be supported on the basis of the rules of law we have found to govern this case or, for that matter, in logic of reason, which would warrant approving one and rejecting the other. To begin with the statute is drawn, I believe, with a precise, indeed laborious, attention to every detail of the standards established by the United States Supreme Court.
First, there is a recognition in the Act that the State can support state schools without supporting nonpublic schools, but, because of the “crisis” found to exist, the aid accorded to teachers in nonpublic schools is considered essential to the State’s objective in education. The program is voluntary and is given by the State without coercion of any kind. Teachers must request the salary supplement, they need not do so; and payments are made directly to them, the nonpublic school not being involved directly or otherwise in the payment. Benefits under the Act are available to all teachers in nonpublic schools without regard to whether they are religious or nonreligious. It is in fact an effort by the State to make its educational program more general than it would be if these nonpublic teachers were cut out of the assistance.
Although the funds paid teachers in nonpublic schools are for teaching subjects in church schools and nonsectarian private schools, each course taught must be secular in nature, free of religious coloring. Payment is carefully conditioned by the statute on the premise that no religion is taught for which compensation is sought. With these facts before us, it cannot be assumed, as plaintiffs’ brief suggests, that school authorities are unable to prescribe studies which are truly secular and segregate the teaching of these subjects from religious studies, or that the teachers will not honestly discharge their duties by keeping religion out of secular studies. The answer to the claim that religion will be injected into secular studies is simply that the courts will be open to adjudicate this question when the facts demonstrate that this has taken place. I must conclude in considering this Act on its face that the courses taught by teachers receiving supplements under the Act are such that they are free of religious content and, therefore, that the State’s funds will not be used to support religion. The Act commands that this be so. No payment is authorized for any moment of time devoted to teaching religion. The Act emphatically proscribes any *1085admixture of religious and secular teaching. To say that the contrary will occur would be conjecture and speculation.
The notion that church schools cannot provide secular education which is not permeated with religious teaching rests on two related themes — that church related education is one single enterprise, rendered religious by the atmosphere and the motivation of the educators, and that denominational schools employ teaching practices which impermissibly permeate all subject matter with religion. These assertions are conclusions of law stated as irrefutable factual presumptions neither justified nor supported by this record. See Valente, Aid to Church Related Education — New Directions Without Dogma, 55 U.Va.L.R. 579, 588 (1969). As the Allen Court reasoned, parochial schools pursue both sectarian and secular functions, and the secular function is constitutionally qualified for aid.
Courts have often recognized, and the facts before us support the view, that religious schools pursue two goals, religious instruction and secular education. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925) the basis of the holding was that the State’s interest in education by requiring compulsory attendance would be adequately served by reliance on the secular teaching that accompanies religious training in the schools maintained by the Society of Sisters. The proposition must be rejected, therefore, that all church related education constitutes religious education and must be disqualified from government aid.
Courts must take care that they do not, in the name of religious liberty, deny children the benefits of public spending programs for secular education because they exercise freedom of choice by attending private nonpublic schools, religious and nonreligious. Establishment Clause values will receive a full measure of protection if there are assurances that public funds expended to improve education generally will not subsidize religious instruction.
Moreover, the statute’s purposes and effects make it clear that any assumption based upon judicial notice that all church education is permeated with a religious coloring would of necessity have to be made in direct opposition to these findings in the statute:
(f) That the elementary and secondary education of children is today recognized as a public welfare purpose; that nonpublic education through providing instruction in secular subjects, makes an important contribution to the achieving of such public welfare purpose; that the governmental duty to support the achieving of public welfare purposes in education may in part be fulfilled through governmental contracts for secular educational services provided by teachers in nonpublic schools.
*1087Underlying the cases and the legislation under consideration, is the recognition that “private education has played and is playing a significant and valuable role in raising national levels of knowledge.” Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 247, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 1928, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1968). A high quality of education is considered indispensable for achieving the kind of nation and the kind of citizenry we strive to create, and private schools do an acceptable job of providing the type of secular education which is in keeping with these aims.
Here no funds arc paid to the school; the payment is made to the teacher and mailed to the teacher’s home address. It is suggested that the school benefits, if not directly, indirectly from these payments, for it is relieved of paying the supplement. Aside from the fact that there is no evidence to support this speculation, the record more properly indicates that the purpose and effect of the payments is to provide an additional service to the children which they would not otherwise have available — a quality education maintained with teachers who receive pay commensurate with the pay received by public school teachers. As the Court observed in DiCenso v. Robinson, 316 F.Supp. 112 (D. Rhode. Island 1970) : “The Salary Supplement Act will not relieve the parishes or parents of their escalating burden, but will temporarily enable parochial schools to compete for qualified teachers.”
For Louisiana to find the funds required to maintain its present level of education, and at the same time provide the improved education it deems vital to the public welfare without using nonpublic school facilities, would require that it make an outlay of funds far beyond its present ability. Since it could not reasonably attain the secular ends the Act promotes without using nonpublic school facilities, it is not a derogation of Establishment Clause principles to use nonpublic sectarian or nonsectarian school facilities to promote these secular ends even if there should incidentally be a minimal support to those nonpublic schools. Horace Mann League v. Board of Education, 242 Md. 645, 220 A.2d 51 (1966), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 97, 87 S.Ct. 317, 17 L.Ed.2d 195.
The purpose and effect test announced in Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed.2d 844 (1963) is fully satisfied in this case. The statute neither establishes nor abridges religion. Its purposes are announced and defined as: “a public welfare purpose”, an effort to forestall a “crisis”, a program to improve the State’s “literacy” rate, the recognition that sectarian schools make a “significant educational and economic contribution”, a program to promote the State’s interest in “Louisiana children receiving the best education its citizens can provide”. All are public, nonreligious, secular purposes. These, too, are “effects” which the Act *1089aims to achieve; they are “effects” which neither promote nor inhibit religion. “No one in the last third of the 20th Century can doubt that a program aimed at improving the quality of education in the schools is a matter of legitimate State concern.” Board of Education of Central School District No. 1 v. Allen, 20 N.Y.2d 109, 281 N.Y.S.2d 799, 228 N.E.2d 791 (1967).
The problem of maintaining a decent quality of education in all its schools, public as well as nonpublic, is not peculiar to Louisiana. Pennsylvania enacted a statute in 1968. Pennsylvania Non-Public Elementary and Secondary School Act, No. 109, June 19, 1968; 24 P.S. (Purdon), Sec. 5601 et seq. In 1969 Connecticut and Rhode Island enacted, respectively, the Non-Public School Secular Education Act (Public Act 791) and the Teachers Salary Supplement Act (R.I.Gen.Laws Ann. § 15-51-3). In the same year, Ohio enacted the Supplementary Education Services Act (Ohio Rev.Code § 3317.06(H)). In 1970 two more States with large numbers of children in nonpublic schools passed basic assistance legislation; Michigan and New York (Michigan Teachers Salary Supplement Act, Mich.Stat.Ann. § 15.1919 [M.C. L.A. § 388.612 et seq.] and New York Mandated Services Act, Laws of 1970, ch. 138). Similar bills are also pending in a number of other State legislatures. In addition, these recent cases have upheld state aid to religious and secular institutions. Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U.S. 664, 90 S.Ct. 1409, 25 L.Ed.2d 697 (1970); Tilton v. Finch, 312 F.Supp. 1191 (1970); Lemon v. Kurtzman, 310 F.Supp. 35 (1970), prob. juris. Noted 397 U.S. 1034, 90 S.Ct. 1354, 25 L.Ed.2d 646 (1970).
Excessive involvement of the State in the affairs of nonpublic schools is guarded against in the statute by requiring that in order for a teacher to qualify the nonpublic schools must be “supported predominantly” from funds or property derived from nongovernmental sources. Involvement with the church or private school is further restricted by requiring payment directly to the teacher. Any inquiry into school operations is nothing more than that which has been required for many years under the Compulsory School Attendance Law. See footnote 1, supra, and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925).
Based upon these considerations I do not find the Act to be inconsistent with the Establishment Clauses of the State or Federal Constitutions.
II.
The language of Article IV, Section 8, of the State Constitution which is invoked here in support of the contention that the Act is unconstitutional is to the effect that no money shall be taken from the public treasury “in aid of any * * * religion, or in aid of any * * * teacher thereof, as such * * * ” Nothing in this constitutional command prohibits the use of public funds to pay teachers. Payment is only denied to teachers of religion “as such”. As I have already carefully pointed out, the Act painstakingly adheres to the requirement that public funds only be used for secular purposes to advance education. Throughout its content the use of public funds to aid religion is prohibited. Hence, no conflict with this State’s constitutional provision is found in the Act, and the attack based upon this constitutional provision must fail.
III.
Forty years ago when this Court decided Borden v. La. State Board of Education and Cochran v. La. State Board of Education, Article XII, Section 13, of the State Constitution set forth that “No public funds shall be used for the support of any private or sectarian school. * * * ” In 1962 that provision was amended to provide that “No appropriation of public funds shall be made to any private or sectarian school * * * ” Obviously, the constitutional restriction was relaxed when the language was changed from “shall be used for the support” to “shall be made”. The meaning to be derived from this revision is that so long as the appropriation is not “made to” the private or sectarian school it may incidentally “support” such a school. If the statutes under consideration in the Borden and Cochran Cases could be held not to violate this constitutional provision before revision, the Act before us today undoubtedly meet the. requirements of today’s constitution.
Clearly state “support” cannot extend to such a point that the strictures of the Establishment Clause are violated. Thus if, in helping to advance secular education, the religious school receives an incidental benefit, the program is not thereby rendered constitutionally infirm. It is a primary purpose and effect which is secular which is relevant to the constitutional question. Viewed in this light, the Act in contest is not contrary to Article XII, Section 13, of the Louisiana Constitution.
The solemn findings of the Legislature that the public welfare will be served by the program the Act proposes are entitled to great weight, uttered as they are in the shadow of the State’s educational crisis. “While recitals of fact in a legislative Act may not be conclusive, a decent respect for coordinate branches of the government requires the courts to treat them as true until the contrary appears.” Opinion of Justices, Me., 261 A.2d 58 (1970). And while I realize that the existence of a crisis does not justify changing the meaning of the Constitution, the existence of a crisis is certainly pertinent to a determination of whether a public purpose is present. Undoubtedly this carefully circumscribed program is designed to comply with both the Federal and State constitutional man*1091dates, and the State is entitled to exert this effort in its struggle to meet its greatest problem. What the Constitution does not prohibit, the State is free to do. McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 4 L.Ed. 579 (U.S.1819). Teachers in nonpublic schools, private and religious alike, are constitutionally entitled to these funds so long as the primary purpose and effect is to serve secular education for Louisiana’s children.
A bare majority of this Court strikes this legislature down without formulating reasons for its action and with full knowledge of the reasons announced in this dissent. Impressed' as this question is with such a vital interest to the children of this State, the majority action cannot be justified.
I dissent.
APPENDIX
Act No. 223
House Bill No. 369
By: Messrs, Guidry, Leithman, Vesich, Angelle, Marcel, Marionneaux, Lebreton, Crais, Labord, Miller, O’Brien, Hessler, Guilliot, Sutterfield, Schmitt, Cheek, Broussard, Booker, T. A. Casey, Breaux, Simon, Lauricella, Soniat, Anzelmo, Gregson, Fortier, Boesch, Ward, Lofaso, Cefalu, J. S. Casey, Bordes, Hainkel, Bagert and Dejean and Mrs. Laperouse.
AN ACT
Providing for the purchase by the State of Louisiana of secular educational services from teachers employed by nonpublic schools and establishing procedures by which the State Superintendent of Public Education shall execute and regulate contracts for such purchases.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of Louisiana:
Section 1. Short Title: This act may be referred to as the “Louisiana Secular Educational Services Act.”
Section 2. Findings of fact, Declaration of Necessity, and Statement of Public Policy. It is hereby determined and declared as a matter of legislative finding:
(a) A clear and present crisis exists in the State of Louisiana with respect to the education of children in elementary and secondary schools.
(b) This crisis is the result of unprecedented rising costs in all areas of operation, and unprecedented demand for improvement in the quality and calibre of education and opportunities for education available for Louisiana children, including those who are being educated in nonpublic schools;
(c) Certain of the financial aspects of this crisis in education in nonpublic schDols *1095are the direct result of state and local government taxation to support pay increases for public school teachers, and to defray costs of improved public school facilities; nonpublic schools have been reduced to a noncompetitive position for the employment of qualified teachers of secular educational subjects;
(d) In some of its aspects the crisis in education is national in scope, e. g., the demand for excellence in all programs of instruction, for the creation and implementation of innovative methods and techniques of teaching and for improvement of teacher salary schedules to assure a high level of quality within the teacher corps itself;
(e) That the State of Louisiana recognizes the fact that its literacy rate is among the lowest in the nation and that only through continued concentrated efforts on the part of the Legislature and educators can the educational level be raised;
(f) That the elementary and secondary education of children is today recognized as a public welfare purpose; that nonpublic education, through providing instruction in secular subjects, makes an important contribution to the achieving of such public welfare purpose; that the governmental duty to support the achieving of public welfare purposes in education may in part be fulfilled through governmental contracts for secular educational services provided by teachers in nonpublic schools.
(g) Attendance of children at' nonpublic schools constitutes compliance with the Louisiana Compulsory School Attendance law; and that nonpublic education in the State of Louisiana today, as during past 3'ears, bears the burden of educating 15 per cent of all elementary and secondary school pupils in Louisiana, thus making a significant educational and economic contribution to education in the state;
(h) It is in the public interest that all Louisiana children receive the best education its citizens can provide; that the State of Louisiana has the right, the responsibility, the duty and the obligation, in order to accomplish the objective of quality education for Louisiana children, to provide financial assistance to qualified teachers of secular subjects in nonpublic schools, by the purchase of their secular educational services.
Section 3. Definitions. The following terms, whenever used or referred to in this Act, shall have the following meaning and interpretation:
(a) “Nonpublic School Teacher” means any person employed by an approved nonpublic school, as defined herein, for the teaching of secular subjects in such school.
(b) “Approved Nonpublic School” means
(1) Any non-profit elementary of secondary school within the State of Louisiana or which may hereafter be established within the state of Louisiana, offer*1097ing education to the children of this state in any grades from grades one through twelve, wherein a pupil may fulfill the requirements of the Compulsory School Attendance Law;
(2) which is supported predominately from funds or property derived from nongovernmental sources; and
(3) No teacher shall be denied the benefits of this Act because of his or her race, creed, religion or national origin and no teacher shall be denied the benefits of this Act because of the race, creed, religion or national origin of the children he or she teaches.
(c) “Purchase of Secular Educational Services” means the purchase by the Department of Education, from a school teacher, of services in teaching secular subjects to children enrolled in approved nonpublic schools. Payments shall be made directly to the teacher and such payments shall not exceed the State scale paid to teachers in the public school system.
(d) “Secular Subject” means any course of study in the curricula of the public schools, and shall include, but not necessarily he limited to, the teaching of mathematics, language arts, general and physical sciences, physical education, art and music, crafts and trades, home economics, or any other course of study in the curricula of the public schools, other than those involving the teaching of religious beliefs or any form of worship of any sect Or religion.
Section 4. The State Sitperintendent of Public Education shall administer this Act and shall:
(a) Make contracts for the purchase of secular educational services directly with teachers of secular subjects;
(b) Establish appropriate rules and regulations for the approval of schools . and school teachers hereunder, including such regulations as may be necessary for a determination that this Act is being lawfully and properly administered;
(c) Prescribe forms and establish procedures to enable nonpublic school teachers in the State of Louisiana to make application and contract for the sale of secular educational services.
Section 5. There is hereby created the “Secular Educational Services Fund,” which shall be administered by and under the control of the Superintendent of Public Education. All expenses and disbursements in connection with the administration and implementation of this Act shall be made exclusively from said fund. No state funds dedicated to the support of the public schools of Louisiana shall form a part of the “Secular Educational Services Fund” or in any way be used in the implementation of this Act.
In the event that, in any fiscal year, the total revenues paid into the “Secular Educa*1099tional Services Fund” .shall be insufficient to pay the total amount of approved teacher contracts under this Act, such contracts shall be paid in an amount equal to the proportion which the total amount of such contracts bears to the total amount of monies available in said Fund.
This Act shall not be implemented by appropriation or otherwise until on and after the date on which the pay schedule for public school teachers under Act 397 of 1968 is implemented.
Section 6. If any provision or item of this Act is held invalid, such invalidity shall not affect other provisions of this Act which can be given effect without the invalid provisions.
Section 7. All laws or parts of laws in conflict with any of the provisions of this Act are hereby expressly repealed.
A true copy:
WADE O. MARTIN, JR.
Secretary of State
This bill have been submitted to the Governor and no action having been taken within the time provided by the Constitution, said bill becomes law without his approval.
It was, and is, my intention to fully concur in the action of the Legislature in adopting this bill, and it was only due to inadvertence caused by the great volume of bill signing that I failed to sign this bill timely.
JOHN J. McKEITHEN
July 10, 1970
A true copy:
WADE O. MARTIN, JR.
Secretary of State
APPENDIX
ACT No. 314
House Bill No. 1048
By: Mr. Guidry
AN ACT
To appropriate the sum of Ten Million Dollars ($10,000,000) our of the General Fund of the State of Louisiana for the fiscal year 1970-1971 to the State Department of Education for the implementation of the “Louisiana Secular Educational Services Act” as provided for the House Bill No. 369, Act No. -, adopted by the 1970 Regular Session of the Legislature of Louisiana.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of Louisiana:
Section 1. The sum of Ten Million Dollars ($10,000,000) is hereby appropriated out of the General Fund of the State of Louisiana for the fiscal year 1970-1971 to the State Department of Education to be *1101used for implementation of the “Louisiana Secular Educational Services Act” as provided for in House Bill No. 369, Act No. -, adopted by the Legislature of Louisiana at the 1970 Regular Session thereof.
Section 2. All laws or parts of laws in conflict herewith are hereby repealed.
Approved by the Governor July 10, 1970 A true copy:
WADE O. MARTIN, JR.
Secretary of State

. La.R.S. 17:236 defines a “school” as contemplated in the Compulsory School Attendance law as follows: “For the purposes of this Chapter, a school is defined as an institution for the teaching of children, consisting of an adequate physical plant, whether owned or leased, instructional staff members and students. For such an institution to be classified as a school, within the meaning of this Chap-tor, instructional staff members shall meet the certification requirements established by the State Board of Education. In addition, any such institution, to bo classified as a school, shall have a minimum of fifty students enrolled as bona fide pupils and shall operate a minimum session of not less than one hundred eighty days.”