Court Opinion

ID: 9885545
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:07:14.817742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:55.036244
License: Public Domain

Fuld, J.
(dissenting). On federal constitutional questions, the Supreme Court of the United States is, of course, the final arbiter, and, concerning the impact of the First Amendment upon religious instruction and the public school, it has recently spoken. That Amendment, the Supreme Court declared,1 ‘ rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. * * * the First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable.” (Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U. S. 203, 212.) In the light of that principle, the court ruled, the Amendment prevents the passage of any laws “ which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.” (Illinois ex rel: McCollum v. Board *184of Education, supra, 333 U. S. 203, 210; Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 15.)
Drawing authority and direction from section 3210, subdivision lb, of the Education Law, as amended in 1940, and roles and regulations promulgated by the New York State Commissioner of Education (Regulations of Comr. of Educ., art. 17, § 154; 1 N. Y. Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations, p. 683), the New York City Board of Education has made provision for a plan of religious instruction by individual sects for the training of public school students. The instruction is given on public school time, but not on public school property. The rules direct that, upon the written request to the school by a parent and a “ duly constituted religious body ” “ prepared to initiate a program for religious instruction,” a child is to be released from his regular classes for such instruction for one hour a week; and the public schools are required to maintain records of attendance at these religious courses and of the reasons for absence therefrom. Those children whose parents do not wish them to attend or whose religious sect has not set up a program of instruction in co-operation with the public school’s regimen are kept in school to receive what the Superintendent of Schools of the City of New York refers to as “ significant education work ’ ’.
Petitioners challenge that program as a breach of the wall of separation erected by the First Amendment. Their standing is not questioned by respondents and many of the allegations of their petition are not disputed. They are United States citizens, residents, taxpayers and property owners in Kings County and parents of children attending public schools in the Borough of Brooklyn, New York City, where the “ released time ” program is in operation. Their children do not utilize that program, but instead receive regular religious instruction outside of public school hours at religious schools of their respective faiths — Zorach’s child at a Protestant Episcopal religious school and Gluck’s children at a Jewish religious school. Asserting that other children in the public schools are released regularly from classes for one hour each week on condition that they attend courses for sectarian religious instruction at religious centers, petitioners seek an order directing the State Commissioner and the City Board to discontinue the program and rescind their regulations,
*185Denied, but deemed admitted for the purposes of this motion to dismiss the petition (see, e.g., Matter of Hines v. State Bd. of Parole, 293 N. Y. 254, 258; Matter of Schwab v. McElligott, 282 N. Y. 182, 185-186), are the further allegations of the petition that the Greater New York Coordinating Committee on Released Time of Jews, Protestants and Roman Catholics “ cooperates closely with the public school authorities ” in managing the program and in “ promoting religious instruction ”; that “ the system necessarily entails use of the public school machinery and time of public school principals, teachers and administrative staff”; that “ the compulsory education system * * * assists and is integrated with the program of sectarian religious instruction carried on by separate religious sects ”; that it “ has resulted and inevitably results in the exercise of pressure and coercion upon parents and children to secure attendance by the children for religious instruction ”; that it “ has resulted and inevitably will result in divisiveness because of difference in religious beliefs and disbeliefs ”; and that “ limiting ” participation in the “ program to 1 duly constituted religious bodies ’ effects an unlawful censorship of religion and preference in favor of certain religious sects.”
In its present posture, the case before us presents the simple question whether the program just described is infected with the same constitutional infirmity that the United States Supreme Court found in Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education (supra, 333 U. S. 203). And, though it is ultimately upon the meaning of the First Amendment that the answer to that question depends, we are no longer free since the McCollum decision to place our own meaning or gloss upon that Amendment, but must read it as has the Supreme Court.
While the Champaign “ released time ” system which was condemned in that case differed in details from that here complained of, the court’s conclusion and the principles which it enunciated are broad in scope and clearly reach far beyond the precise fact situation there presented.
In fixing upon the exact holding of the Supreme Court, there may be room for argument as to which phrase, separated from context, best reflects the sense to be distilled from the several opinions written, but there can be no doubt whatsoever as to the *186net result. Mr. Justice Reed, dissenting alone, recorded the common ground and ultimate conclusion of his brethren’s opinions with the statement (333 U. S., at p. 240): “ From the tenor of the opinions I conclude * * * that any use of a pupil’s school time, whether that use is on or off the school grounds, with the necessary school regulations to facilitate attendance, falls under the han.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Regarding the principles enunciated by the court, the first tenet was that the First Amendment has erected a wall “ high and impregnable ” between Church and State and that the state must maintain a strict neutrality, neither suppressing nor supporting religion. Speaking for a majority of six judges, Mr. Justice Black wrote (333 U. S., at pp. 210-211): “ Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. * * * In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘ a wall of separation between church and State.’ ”
That wall was breached by the released time program in Champaign, according to the court, since by it the state effectively aided religion in two respects — (1) by making the public school buildings available and (2) by providing pupils for this or that sect’s religious classes. Mr. Justice Black made this exceedingly plain in the following passages (pp. 209-210, 212):
“ Pupils compelled by law to go to school for secular education are released in part from their legal duty upon the condition that they attend the religious classes. This is beyond all question a utilization of the tax-established and tax-supported public school system to aid religious groups to spread their faith. And it falls squarely under the ban of the First Amendment, [pp. 209-210]
* * *
“ Here not only are the State’s tax-supported public school buildings used for the dissemination of religious doctrines. The State also affords sectarian groups an invaluable aid in that it helps to provide pupils for their religious classes through use of the State’s compulsory public school machinery. This is not separation of Church and State, [p. 212] ”
*187Not only by direct command, but also by the pressures inherent in the functioning of the program did the Champaign system effect a breach of the wall. “ The Champaign arrangement ”, Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring, said, “ thus presents powerful elements of inherent pressure by the school system in the interest of religious sects. The fact that this power has not been used to discriminate is beside the point. * * * That a child is offered an alternative may reduce the constraint; it does not eliminate the operation of influence by the school in matters sacred to conscience and outside the school’s domain. The law of imitation operates, and non-conformity is not an outstanding characteristic of children. The result is an obvious pressure upon children to attend ” (p. 227).
It is not that the First Amendment begrudges the use of a portion of the school day for religious instruction that condemned the Champaign program. Rather, the objection was the utilization by state authority of the “ momentum of the whole school atmosphere and school planning ’ ’ behind released time: “If it were merely a question of enabling a child to obtain religious instruction with a receptive mind, the thirty or forty-five minutes could readily be found on Saturday or Sunday. If that were all, Champaign might have drawn upon the French system, known in its American manifestation as ‘ dismissed time, ’ whereby one school day is shortened to allow all children to go where they please, leaving those who so desire to go to a religious school. The momentum of the whole school atmosphere and school planning is presumably put behind religious instruction, as given in Champaign, precisely in order to secure for the religious instruction such momentum and planning. To speak of ‘ released time ’ as being only half or three quarters of an hour is to draw a thread from a fabric ” (per Frankfurter, J., concurring, 333 U. S., at pp. 230-231).
The statute, the regulations and the pleadings in the record before us similarly make plain the use of the state’s compulsory public school machinery, its atmosphere and its momentum. The vice in the use of such machinery to provide pupils for the religious classes is as predominant a factor in the present case as it was in McCollum (333 U. S., at p. 212). As in *188that case, so here, pupils compelled by law to go to school for secular education, are released for an hour on condition that they attend religious classes. Accordingly, there is no denying that the program enables religious denominations to divert to sectarian instruction pupils assembled, and time set aside, for secular education by the state’s compulsory attendance laws. Moreover, while it is true that the regulations prohibit comment on a pupil’s failure to attend the religious classes, the program itself seems bound to exert certain inherent pressures on the pupils to attend. For one thing, there results an inevitable feeling of “ separatism ” in pupils “ left behind ” — to avoid which, few will hesitate to conform to the practices of their fellow students (333 U. S., at p. 227). In addition, the release from the obligation to attend public school for the one hour a week is unquestionably an inducement to register for such courses, for, it has been observed, religious instruction can compete more successfully with arithmetic than with recreation.
The co-operation of the public school system further serves to assure the attendance at the religious classes of the pupils enrolled therein. The regulations require that “ Reports of attendance of pupils upon such courses shall be filed with the principal or teacher at the end of each week ”, together with a statement of the reason for any absence. Knowledge that an official record is kept of his attendance necessarily places pressure on the child — accustomed as he is to the discipline of school — to attend these religious classes.
Indeed, the entire vitality of the program lies in the prestige, planning, co-operation and assistance lent by the public school system, which is exactly that fusion and integration of state and religion prohibited by the First Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court. While, therefore, there may here be no use of public school buildings and — I am willing to assume — no use of public school funds and but little of the time of public school personnel, no one may dispute that the state affords sectarian groups “ invaluable aid ” in helping to provide pupils for their religious classes through the use of its compulsory public school machinery. This is more than a “ friendly gesture ” — the phrase is Judge Fboessel’s — between Church and State. If “ Separation means separation, *189not something less ”, if the relation between Church and State is “a ‘ wall * * * ’ not * * * a fine line easily overstepped ” (per Frankfurter, J., concurring, 333 U. S., at p. 231), then, certainly, the New York City program violates the First Amendment.
And, as was true of the Champaign plan, so here in this case, the program is necessarily divisive in its effect. As Justice Frankfurter forcefully noted:
“ Again, while the Champaign school population represents only a fraction of the more than two hundred and fifty sects of the nation, not even all the practicing sects in Champaign are willing or able to provide religious instruction. The children belonging to these non-participating sects will thus have inculcated in them a feeling of separatism when the school should be the training ground for habits of community, or they will have religious instruction in a faith which is not that of their parents. As a result, the public school system of Champaign actively furthers inculcation in the religious tenets of some faiths, and in the process sharpens the consciousness of religious differences at least among some of the children committed to its care. These are consequences not amenable to statistics. But they are precisely the consequences against which the Constitution was directed when it prohibited the Government common to all from becoming embroiled, however innocently, in the destructive religious conflicts of which the history of even this country records some dark pages, [pp. 227-228]
‘ ‘ Designed to serve as perhaps the most powerful agency for promoting cohesion among a heterogeneous democratic people, the public school must keep scrupulously free from entanglement in the strife of sects. The preservation of the community from divisive conflicts, of Government from irreconcilable pressures by religious groups, of religion from censorship and coercion however subtly exercised, requires strict confinement of the State to instruction other than religious, leaving to the individual’s church and home, indoctrination in the faith of his choice, [pp. 216-217] ”
Present a program where some children are released from their usual attendance at public school on condition that they attend courses in religious observance and education under the control of duly constituted religious bodies, it cannot matter, *190insofar as the impact of the First Amendment is concerned, that such religious instruction is given off the school grounds. What is vital and operative is, not where the religious teaching is given, but that it secures its pupils through the instrumentality of the state and through the machinery and momentum of the public school system. No one disputes the power of the legislature to shorten the school day so as to afford greater opportunity for week-day religious instruction, but it may not go beyond that and lend its aid to coerce or encourage enrollment for such instruction. There is a vital distinction between coercion and what the court chooses to term “ an accommodation ” between “ constitutional prohibitions and the right of parental control over children.” (Opinion of Judge Froessel, supra, p. 172.)
In sum, then, what the First Amendment forbids is the fusing, through state action, of the secular and the sectarian in the field of public education. The circumstance that any sect may participate in the program is immaterial. It is not discrimination alone that the Constitution prohibits; as the Supreme Court made indisputably clear, neither the state nor its public schools may be used to “ 1 aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. ’ ” (333 U. S. 203, 210-211.)
I perceive no merit in the contention for which Pierce v. Society of Sisters (268 U. S. 510), is cited — that a challenge to the released time program is a challenge to the right of parents to control the rearing and education of their children. More specifically, it is urged that, if a parent may insist upon the complete “ release ” of a child from any attendance at a public school so as to permit him to pursue his studies in a parochial school, the parent has, a fortiori, a right to insist on the release of the child for but a small percentage of school time.
The argument goes too far. It assumes that, even, though the child is enrolled in a public school, the parent has a constitutional right to remove him therefrom for any period and at any time for instruction in sectarian religious courses. The Pierce case stands for no such proposition. The Supreme Court there held only that the state cannot constitutionally prevent parents from determining for themselves where their children shall be educated and whether that education shall be sectarian or nonsectarian. No one questions the right of parents to send *191their children to private or parochial schools of their own choosing. Parents do not, however, have any constitutional right to interfere with the functioning of the public school system or to demand that it serve as an adjunct to a plan of religious instruction. Moreover, what the McCollum case concerned itself with, and what is here involved, is not the right of a parent, but rather a basic limitation on the power of the state. The McCollum case, as we have noted, invoked the doctrine of separation, not against the parent’s right, but against the state’s power, and held that the state may not commingle a program of religious instruction with the secular education given in its public schools. Nothing in the Pierce case either negates that doctrine or suggests a contrary conclusion.
It may well be that there are children growing up untutored in matters religious and, if that be so, it is a matter for grave concern. Considerations of fundamental principle, however, are involved when an attempt is made to enable religious groups to cure that lack through the instrumentality of the public school. Our constitutional policy, it has been said, “ does not deny the value or the necessity for religious training, teaching or observance. Eather it secures their free exercise. But to that end it does deny that the state can undertake or sustain them in any form or degree. For this reason the sphere of religious activity, as distinguished from the secular intellectual liberties, has been given the twofold protection and, as the state cannot forbid, neither can it perform or aid in performing the religious function. The dual prohibition makes that function altogether private. It cannot be made a public one by legislative act. This was the very heart of Madison’s Eemonstrance, as it is of the [First] Amendment itself.
“ It is not because religious teaching does not promote the public or the individual’s welfare, hut because neither is furthered when the state promotes religious education, that the Constitution forbids it to do so.” (Rutledge, J., dissenting in Everson v. Board of Educ., supra, 330 U. S., at p. 52.)
Nor may the released time program be justified as merely another application of the immemorial and unchallenged prac*192tice of releasing children from school attendance to permit them to observe their religious Holy Days. The suggested analogy confuses two entirely different and distinct matters. Eeligious observance of Holy Days necessarily requires attendance at church or temple at stated times which may coincide with the hours otherwise prescribed by law for school attendance. To refuse to excuse children for such religious observance would be a restraint of that freedom of religion, an interference with that liberty of worship, which the Constitution guarantees. (Cf. West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, passim.) Obviously, no such issue is here involved.
People ex rel. Lewis v. Graves (245 N. Y. 195), upon which respondents heavily rely, did involve a scheme for released time for religious instruction somewhat similar to the one before us: on the written request of the parent alone — and not, as in this case, by a clergyman of a “ duly constituted religious body” as well —the child was released for a half hour a week of what would normally have been a study session at school. However, in view of the Supreme Court’s interpretation in the McCollum case of the controlling First Amendment, the Lewis case can no longer be deemed decisive, and no useful purpose is served by considering whether an appraisal of the factual differences between the New York City program and the White Plains program in the Lewis case would make the Lewis decision inapplicable even under the Constitution of New York State. In addition, and I mention it in passing, the petitioner in the Lewis case relied upon article IX, section 4 (now art. XI, § 4) of the State Constitution, and neither the court nor any of the parties even referred to the constitutional provision (art. I, § 3) here invoked.
It is impossible to justify the determination made below thai the petition be dismissed for insufficiency. At the very least, there should be a trial to afford petitioners an opportunity to establish by proof, if they can, such allegations as those that assert the “ close cooperation ” between public school authorities and those conducting the classes in religious instruction; the use of public school machinery and the time of public school personnel “ necessarily entailed ” by the program; the “ exercise of pressure and coercion ” upon parents and children to secure attendance of children at such classes ; the divjsiye nqture *193of the program; and the “ unlawful censorship of religion and preference in favor of certain religious sects” “effected” by the program. However, I believe — as did two of the justices in the Appellate Division — that, on the basis of statute, regulations and the admitted allegations of the petition, petitioners are entitled to a decision, on the pleadings, that the released time program under consideration falls within the ban of the Federal Constitution.
Time has taught, and the Supreme Court, by its McCollum decision has reaffirmed, the wisdom and necessity of maintaining “ a wall * * * high and impregnable ” between Church and State, between public school secular education and religious observance and teaching. Maintenance of that barrier was regarded by the Supreme Court, as earlier it had been by the Founding Fathers, not as a demonstration of hostility to religion, but rather as a means of assuring complete freedom of religious worship. In my opinion, the conclusion is inescapable that the released time program in New York City breaches that barrier.
Accordingly, I would reverse and direct entry of a final order granting the relief sought in the petition.
Lewis, Conway and Dye, JJ., concur with Fkoessel, J„; Loughban, Ch. J., concurs for affirmance upon the authority of People ex rel. Lewis v. Graves (245 N. Y. 195); Desmond, J., concurs for affirmance in a separate opinion; Fuld, J., dissents in opinion.
Order affirmed.