Court Opinion

ID: 9426078
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:44.777605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:24.648915
License: Public Domain

Mb.' Chief Justice Burger,
concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the Court only insofar as it affirms the judgment of the District Court. My limited agreement with the Court as to this action leads me, however, to agree generally with the views expressed by Mr. Justice Rehnquist and Mr. Justice White in regard to the other programs under review. I especially find it difficult to accept the Court’s extravagant suggestion of potential entanglement which it finds in the “auxiliary services” program of Act .194. Here, the Court’s holding, it seems to me, goes beyond any prior holdings of this Court and, indeed, conflicts with our holdings in Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 (1968), and Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971). There is absolutely no support in this record or, for that matter, in ordinary human experience for the concern some see with respect to the “dangers” lurking in extending common, nonsectarian tools of the education process— especially remedial tools — to students in private schools. As I noted in my separate opinion in Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756 (1973), the “fundamental principle which I see running through our prior decisions in this difficult and sensitive field of law ... is premised more on experience and history than on logic.” Id., at 802. Certainly, there is no basis in “experience and history” to conclude that a State’s attempt to provide — through the services of its own state-selected professionals — the remedial assistance necessary for all its children poses the same potential for *386unnecessary administrative entanglement or divisive political confrontation which concerned the Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra. Indeed, I see at least as much potential for divisive political debate in opposition to the crabbed attitude the Court shows in this case. See, e. g., ante, at 371 n. 21.
If the consequence of the Court’s holding operated only to penalize institutions with a religious affiliation, the result would be grievous enough; nothing in the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment permits governmental power to discriminate against or affirmatively stifle religions or religious activity. Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 18 (1947). But this holding does more: it penalizes children — children who have the misfortune to have to cope with the learning process under extraordinarily heavy physical and psychological burdens, for the most part congenital. This penalty strikes them not because of any act of theirs but because of their parents’ choice of religious exercise. This, as Mr. Justice Rehnquist effectively demonstrates, totally turns its back on what Mr. Justice Douglas wrote for the Court in Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 313-314 (1952), particularly:
“When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of. our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs.”
To hold, as the Court now does, that the Constitution permits the States to give special assistance to some of its children whose handicaps prevent their deriving the benefit normally anticipated from the education required to become a productive member of society and, at the same time, to deny those benefits to other children only because they attend a Lutheran, Catholic, or other church-*387sponsored school does not simply tilt the Constitution against religion; it literally turns the Religion Clauses on their heads. As Mr. Justice Douglas said for the Court in Zorach, supra, this is
“to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.” Id., at 314.
The melancholy consequence of what the Court does today is to force the parent to choose between the “free exercise” of a religious belief by opting for a sectarian education for his child or to forgo the opportunity for his child to learn to cope with — or overcome — serious congenital learning handicaps, through remedial assistance financed by his taxes. Affluent parents, by employing private teaching specialists, will be able to cope with this denial of equal protection, which is, for me, a gross violation of Fourteenth Amendment rights, but all others will be forced to make a choice between their judgment as to their children’s spiritual needs and their temporal need for special remedial learning assistance. One can only hope that, at some future date, the Court will come to a more enlightened and tolerant view of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion, thus eliminating the denial of equal protection to children in church-sponsored schools, and take a more realistic view that carefully limited aid to children is not a step toward establishing a state religion — at least while this Court sits.