Court Opinion

ID: 9427773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:51.344973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.608522
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
dissenting.
Although I agree with Mr. Justice Blackmun’s demonstration of why today’s holding is not compelled by precedent, my vote also rests on a more fundamental disagreement with the Court. The Court’s approval of a direct subsidy to sectarian schools to reimburse them for staff time spent in taking attendance and grading standardized tests is but another in a long line of cases making largely ad hoc decisions about what payments may or may not be constitutionally made to nonpublic schools. In groping for a rationale to support today’s decision, the Court has taken a position that could equally be used to support a subsidy to pay for staff time attributable to conducting fire drills or even for constructing and maintaining fireproof premises in which to conduct classes. Though such subsidies might represent expedient fiscal policy, I firmly believe they would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The Court’s adoption of such a position confirms my view, expressed in Wolman v. Walter, 433 U. S. 229, 264 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), and Roemer v. Maryland Public Works Bd., 426 U. S. 736, 775 (Stevens, J., dissenting), that the entire enterprise of trying to justify various types of subsidies to nonpublic schools should be abandoned. Rather than continuing with the sisyphean task of trying to patch together the “blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier” described in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 614, I would resurrect the “high and impregnable” wall between church and state constructed by the Framers of the First Amendment. See Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 18.