Court Opinion

ID: 9667259
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:40:43.158905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:36.546331
License: Public Domain

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The first Amendment’s Establishment of Religion clause1 is here pressed to vitiate Maryland’s monetary aid to the five defendant private institutions2 of *1298higher learning under Annotated Code Art. 77A, §§ 65-70. Disagreeing reluctantly with the majority, I find the Act in these instances.does in truth offend the Constitution by its provisions of funds, in that it exposes State money for use in advancing religion, no matter the vigilance to avoid it.
I. The legislation must be conceded to be secular in purpose, and so the first point for consideration is whether each of the three remaining defendant institutions is a church-affiliated or church-related body. It is hardly deniable that all of them are of this category.
According to the court’s findings, they maintain a “vigorous religion or theology department” and the “primary concern of these departments, either admittedly or by the obvious thrust of the courses, is Christianity”. Moreover, these departments are staffed almost exclusively with clerics wearing their affiliated churches’ ministerial vestments. Also in its findings the court sees itself “unable to characterize the manner in which theology and religion are conducted” and feels obliged to make “no finding as to whether [the study of religion or theology] is sectarian at any of the defendant institutions”.
The colleges’ religious affiliations are at once readily and immediately made known in the college catalogues. Religious exercises in the faith of the church are conducted on the campuses, but attendance is not compulsory. In some classrooms there are religious figures and pictures. Quite understandably the large majority of students in each institution in suit attends the church of its religious persuasion. Every college has a chaplaincy program, with the chaplain a clergyman of the affiliated church.
While the instruction, liturgy and symbolisms just mentioned are to be honored at all times and in all places, to me these incidents quite clearly depict the colleges as church-affiliated or church-related. Indeed, this conclusion appears not to be seriously debated.
II. The next question is whether the instant college-aid programs may in primary effect affront the Act’s interdiction of the use of State money for sectarian purposes. I think they do.
It is the potential use of the moneys which is the determinant to be looked to in appraising the constitutionality of State monetary aid to church-affiliated or church-related institutions, as I read the Supreme Court’s enunciations. The legality of the moneys’ utilization is not finally and conclusively resolved by the actual use of the funds, no matter how neutral, bona fide or praiseworthy. It is the reasonable opportunity for sectarian misapplication that is the gauge of the validity of the statute’s particular beneficence. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 617-619, 623, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971).3 Otherwise, unintended circumvention would escape the First Amendment’s unrelenting veto. The present grants must, therefore, be scrutinized for contingencies of this nature.
Of telling decisiveness here is the payment of the grants directly to the colleges unmarked in purpose. These features were decried in Levitt v. Committee for Public Education, 413 U.S. 472, 480, 93 S.Ct. 2814, 37 L.Ed.2d 736 (1973); Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 774, 93 S.Ct. 2955, 37 L.Ed.2d 948 (1973), and Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, 403 U.S. 602, 621, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971). There, the potential of misuse was existent because of the lack of a definitive plan of application, such as the designation of worthy needs or of desired improvements, for example, professors’ salaries, books, buildings and like objectives.
*1299Presently the Act is simply a blunderbuss discharge of public funds to a church-affiliated or church-related college. There is only a single warning of the forbidden use and that merely in a phrase of utmost generality: “sectarian purposes”. Noteworthy, the funds could be devoted to the compensation of the theology faculty. One of the faculty members in each college is the chaplain. This is but one example of the overlap of academic and theological salaries. Beyond peradventure, save for the self-restraint of the college administrators and without their faithful attention, the grants could well, though proscribed, go into secular and sectarian areas at the same time. These could be menial or professional services, or building and grounds maintenance, related to both purposes. Levitt v. Committee for Public Education, supra, 413 U.S. 472, 479, 93 S.Ct. 2814, 37 L.Ed.2d 736 (1973). Research discloses to me no comparable carte blanche power of expenditure permissibly conferred by a State upon church-affiliated or church-related institutions. Surely, that potential for abuse is here, and only through honesty has deflection of the money been avoided.
The infirmity of non-prescription of the objects of the State aid is exquisitely demonstrated in Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672, 91 S.Ct. 2091, 29 L.Ed.2d 790 (1971). There the United States authorized grants to colleges for the construction of academic facilities except a facility to be used for sectarian purposes. The Government reserved a 20-year interest in the units to be built so as to insure enforcement of the proviso. The Court held that limiting the prohibition to 20 years opened the facility for utilization for any purpose after the expiration of 20 years, and for this reason the aid tolerated a grant of the post-20-year period for use for sectarian objects. This decision trenchantly confirms that possible utilization of public property in advancing religion is ipso facto inhibited.
III. The “sectarian purposes” outlawed by the Act, the fact findings in this case conclude, “must be interpreted as encompassing the study of religion or theology”, p. 1297. • As previously explained, all of the defendant colleges have an alive religion or theology department. At each of them certain courses in these subjects are mandatory. While the fact findings say that the two teachings are approached as complex and intriguing intellectual disciplines, it adds, “[hjowever, a department staffed mainly by clerics of the affiliated church and geared toward a limited array of the possible theology or religion courses affords a congenial means of furthering the secondary objectives of fostering religious experience”. Another finding acknowledges:
“Recognition of the academic freedom of these instructors does not necessarily lead to a conclusion that courses in the religion or theology departments at the five defendants have no overtones of indoctrination.” (Accent added.)
Thus, obviously, the departments of theology have been quickened into a significant sectarian area of education. With a department so inspirited and with its staff and faculty composed of religious or theological clerics, a resulting expansion of the school of theology seems logically at once at hand. With this mounting potentiality, religious teaching might quite readily permeate and pervade the college. Consequently, the allocation of State moneys to include this growing religious segment could mean that this effectuation of the Act may equate it to a “law respecting an establishment of religion”.
IV. Potentiality is also an assaying factor iri measuring whether the Act’s play within the colleges creates “an excessive government entanglement with religion”. Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, 403 U.S. 602, 613-614, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 2111, 29 L.Ed.2d 745; Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, 397 U.S. 664, 674, 90 S.Ct. 1409, 25 L.Ed.2d 697; Levitt v. Committee for Public Education, 413 U.S. 472, 480-482, 93 S.Ct. 2814, 37 L.Ed.2d 736 (1973); see also Committee for Public Education *1300v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 794, 93 S.Ct. 2955, 37 L.Ed.2d 948 (1973). Instantly the possibility is real and manifold. This is attributable to the complete absence of any appointment of the objects of the Act’s bounty when extended to church-affiliated or church-related entities. In this context, to be assured that none of the public funds kindle or fire religion and theology, a closer oversight is required of the appropriation and application of the grants than in secular schools. Thus unavoidably the State is drawn into frequent and constant touch with the fiscal affairs of each college. This could easily generate controversy.
True, periodical reports' may be expected of the colleges of the grants’ use, with verification by accountants in audit analyses. But, I fear, the tracking down of the moneys would require exceptional safeguards against overflow of religion and theology into the purely academic curricula. This guardianship could lead to excessive entanglement of the State with the colleges.
The following summation from Lemon, 403 U.S. 602, at 621-622, 91 S.Ct. 2105, at 2115 seems apt:
“The history of government grants of a continuing cash subsidy' indicates that such programs have almost always been accompanied by varying measures of control and surveillance. The government cash grants before us now provide no basis for predicting that comprehensive measures of surveillance and controls will not follow. In particular the government’s post-audit power to inspect and evaluate a church-related school’s financial records and to determine which expenditures are religious and which are secular creates an intimate and continuing relationship between church and state”. (Accent added.)
It is but another risk of encroachment on the Act’s ban.
Because of the potentialities posed throughout this dissent, I think the Act is unconstitutional when adapted to the three now-defendant colleges, despite the integrity of the latters’ use of the moneys and despite the welcome help of such institutions in providing public education.
V. Recovery of payments already disbursed by the State is not in my judgment equitably demandable. The recipients relied in good faith on the State funds, and doubtlessly assumed obligations in anticipation of them. In my opinion this disposition of the reimbursement claim is sustainable. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 411 U.S. 192, 93 S.Ct. 1463, 36 L.Ed.2d 151 (1973).
In fine, I deferentially hold the view that an injunction should issue as prayed in the complaint, stopping future payments under the Maryland Act to the three defendant colleges.

. The First Amendment is applicable to the laws of each State through the Fourteenth Amendment. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 108, 63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292 (1943).

. References herein to the defendant colleges are not intended to include St. Joseph’s College, since it is no longer a subsisting institution.
Nor is Western Maryland College included, for I find it is no longer a church-affiliated or church-related institution within the scope of the constitutional inquiry now before the court. Plaintiffs in answer to this defendant’s interrogatories explicitly disclaimed any contention that it is a school of that character and also disclaimed other immediately related aspects of the school’s structure. On January 10, 1974 — just four days before the fact findings were filed in this case — the previous budget provision by the Methodist Church for this college was, at the latter’s request, discontinued for the future. Thus to my mind, if it once existed, *1298all such affiliation or relationship of college and church was terminated.

. While Lemon and other cases, cited post, such as Allen, Levitt, Everson and Nyguist, deal with primary or secondary schools, the principles therein laid out are general in their appositeness.