Court Opinion

ID: 9691875
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:22:03.354327+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:27.650425
License: Public Domain

HAMLIN, Justice
(dissenting) :
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
Simply stated, as I see the situation under consideration, Act 223 of 1970, is an act providing for the purchase by the State of Louisiana of secular educational services from teachers employed by non-public schools.
There is nothing in the Constitution of Louisiana for the year 1921 that prohibits the enactment of such a statute or the purchase of such services.
This is not a statute respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; it does not give preference to or make any discrimination against any church, sect, or creed of religion, or any form of religious faith or worship.
It is not to aid any church, sect or denomination of religion; it is not to aid any priest, preacher, minister or teacher of religion.
It does not provide for an appropriation of public funds to any private or sectarian school. It merely provides for a contract to purchase educational services, such contract to be entered into with the teacher individually.
As I interpret McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819), where a law is not prohibited by the Constitution and is really calculated to affect any of the objects entrusted to the government (the education of its children, as this one is), it is constitutional.
I respectfully dissent.