Court Opinion

ID: 9426941
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:18.482989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.966054
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Parts I, V, VII, and VIII of the Court’s opinion. For the reasons stated below, however, I am unable to join the remainder of the Court’s opinion or its judgment upholding the constitutionality of Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §§ 3317.06 (A), (G), (H), (I), (J), and (K) (Supp. 1976).
The Court upholds the textbook loan provision, § 3317.06 (A), on the precedent of Board of Education v. Allen, 392 *257U. S. 236 (1968). Ante, at 236-238. It also recognizes, however, that there is “a tension” between Allen and the reasoning of the Court in Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S. 349 (1975). I would resolve that tension by overruling Allen. I am now convinced that Allen is largely responsible for reducing the “high and impregnable” wall between church and state erected by the First Amendment, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 18 (1947), to “a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier,” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 614 (1971), incapable of performing its vital functions of protecting both church and state.
In Allen, we upheld a textbook loan program on the assumption that the sectarian school’s twin functions of religious instruction and secular education were separable. 392 U. S., at 245-248. In Meek, we flatly rejected that assumption as a basis for allowing a State to loan secular teaching materials and "equipment to such schools:
“The very purpose of many of those schools is to provide an integrated secular and religious education; the teaching process is, to a large extent, devoted to the inculcation of religious values and belief. . . . Substantial aid to the educational function of such schools, accordingly, necessarily results in aid to the sectarian school enterprise as a whole. '[T]he secular education those schools provide goes hand in hand with the religious mission that is the only reason for the schools’ existence. Within the institution, the two are inextricably intertwined.’ [Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, at 657] (opinion of Brennan, J.).” 421 U. S., at 366.
Thus, although Meek upheld a textbook loan program on the strength of Allen, it left the rationale of Allen undamaged only if there is a constitutionally significant difference between a loan of pedagogical materials directly to a sectarian school and a loan of those materials to students for use in sectarian *258schools. As the Court convincingly demonstrates, ante, at 249-250, there is no such difference.
Allen has also been undercut by our recognition in Lemon that “the divisive political potential” of programs of aid to sectarian schools is one of the dangers of entanglement of church and-state that the First Amendment was intended to forestall. 403 U. S., at 622-624. We were concerned in Lemon with the danger that the need for annual appropriations of larger and larger sums would lead to “[p]olitical fragmentation and divisiveness on religious lines.” Id., at 623. This danger exists whether the appropriations are made to fund textbooks, other instructional supplies, or, as in Lemon, teachers’ salaries. As Mr. Justice Brennan has noted, Allen did not consider the significance of the potential for political divisiveness inherent in programs of aid to sectarian schools. Meek v. Pittenger, supra, at 378 (concurring in part and dissenting in part).
It is, of course, unquestionable that textbooks are central to the educational process.1 Under the rationale of Meek, therefore, they should not be provided by the State to sectarian schools2 because “[substantial aid to the educational function of such schools . . . necessarily results in aid to the sectarian school enterprise as a whole.” 421 U. S., at 366. It is *259also unquestionable that the cost of textbooks is certain to be substantial. Under the rationale of Lemon, therefore, they should not be provided because of the dangers of political “divisiveness on religious lines.” I would, accordingly, overrule Board of Education v. Allen and hold unconstitutional §3317.06 (A).3
By overruling Allen, we would free ourselves to draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable forms of aid that would be both capable of consistent application and responsive to the concerns discussed above. That line, I believe, should be placed between general welfare programs that serve children in sectarian schools because the schools happen to be a convenient place to reach the programs’ target populations and programs of educational assistance.4 General welfare programs, in contrast to programs of educational assistance, do not provide “[substantial aid to the educational function” of schools,5 421 U. S., at 366, whether secular or sectarian, and therefore do not provide the kind of assistance-to the religious *260mission of sectarian schools we found impermissible in Meek. Moreover, because general welfare programs do not assist the sectarian functions of denominational schools, there is no reason to expect that political disputes over the merits of those programs will divide the public along religious lines.
In addition to § 3317.06 (A), which authorizes the textbook loan program, paragraphs (B), (C), and (L), held unconstitutional by the Court, clearly fall on the wrong side of the constitutional line I propose. Those paragraphs authorize, respectively, the loan of instructional materials and equipment and the provision of transportation for school field trips. There can be no contention that these programs provide anything other than educational assistance.
I also agree with the Court that the services authorized by paragraphs (D), (F), and (G) are constitutionally permissible. Those services are speech and hearing diagnosis, psychological diagnosis, and psychological and speech and hearing therapy. Like the medical, nursing, dental, and optometric services authorized by paragraph (E) and not challenged by appellants, these services promote the children’s health and well-being, and have only an indirect and remote impact on their educational progress.6
The Court upholds paragraphs (H), (I), and (K), which it groups with paragraph (G), under the rubric of “therapeutic services.” Ante, at 244 — 248. I cannot agree that the services *261authorized by these three paragraphs should be treated like the psychological services provided by paragraph (G). Paragraph (H) authorizes the provision of guidance and counseling services. The parties stipulated that the functions to be performed by the guidance and counseling personnel would include assisting students in “developing meaningful educational and career goals,” and “planning school programs of study.” In addition, these personnel will discuss with parents “their children’s a) educational progress and needs, b) course selections, c) educational and vocational opportunities and plans, and d) study skills.” The counselors will also collect and organize information for use by parents, teachers, and students. App. 45-46. This description makes clear that paragraph (H) authorizes services that would directly support the educational programs of sectarian schools. It is, therefore, in violation of the First Amendment.
Paragraphs (I) and (K) provide remedial services and programs for disabled children. The stipulation of the parties indicates that these paragraphs will fund specialized teachers who will both provide instruction themselves and create instructional plans for use in the students’ regular classrooms. Id., at 47-48. These “therapeutic services” are clearly intended to aid the sectarian schools to improve the performance of their students in the classroom. I would not treat them as if they were programs of physical or psychological therapy.
Finally, the Court upholds paragraph (J), which provides standardized tests and scoring services, on the ground that these tests are clearly nonideological and that the State has an interest in assuring that the education received by sectarian school students meets minimum standards. I do not question the legitimacy of this interest, and if Ohio required students to obtain specified scores on certain tests before being promoted or graduated, I would agree that it could administer those tests to sectarian school students to ensure that its standards were being met. The record indicates, however, only that the tests *262“are used to measure the progress of students in secular subjects.” Id., at 48. It contains no indication that the measurements are taken to assure compliance with state standards rather than for internal administrative purposes of the schools. To the extent that the testing is done to serve the purposes of the sectarian schools rather than the State, I would hold that its provision by the State violates the First Amendment.

 See Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S., at 384 (BreNNAN, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S., at 252 (Black, J., dissenting).

 Although the texts are formally loaned to the students or their parents, the reality is that they are provided to the school. The school has the power to choose the books to be provided, since the statute defines “textbook” as “ 'any book or book substitute which a pupil uses as a text or text substitute in a particular class or program in the school he regularly attends.’ ” Ante, at 237. The school will distribute “loan request” forms to the students, collect them, and submit them to the public authority which provides the books. The record is silent as to whether the books will be returned to the public authority or stored at the school during the summer recess.

 Our experience with Allen bears out the warning of The Chief Justice:
“[I]n constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach 'the verge,’ have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a ‘downhill thrust’ easily set in motion but difficult to retard or stop.” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 624 (1971).
The tension between Allen and Meek indicates that we must soon either remove the platform or take the plunge into new realms of state assistance to sectarian institutions.

 This is the line advocated by Mr. Justice Black, dissenting in Board of Education v. Allen, supra, at 250-254. Mr. Justice Black was the author of the Court’s opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1 (1947), on which the opinion in Allen was based.

 To some extent, of course, any program that improves the general well-being of a student may assist his education. The distinction is between programs that help the school educate a student and welfare programs that may have the effect of making a student more receptive to being educated.

 Appellants argue that these programs are impermissible because the diagnostic and therapeutic personnel may be influenced to indoctrinate the pupils with whom they deal in the tenets of the sect that runs the sectarian school. I agree that if this danger were real, it would militate strongly against upholding these services. Appellants do not explain, however, why it is any more likely that a hearing test will become an occasion for indoctrination than that an eye chart will be used to deliver religious messages. (Appellants do not challenge the provision of diagnostic op-tometric services.) While constitutional adjudication must be sensitive to the danger of subtle abuses, it cannot be based on fear of imaginable but totally implausible evils.