Court Opinion

ID: 9425441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:41.153614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.574615
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
The question presented in this case is whether South Carolina’s assistance to the Baptist College at Charleston under the South Carolina Educational Facilities Authority Act constitutes constitutionally impermissible aid by the State for this sectarian institution.1 The test to which I adhere for determining such questions is whether the arrangement between the State and the *750Baptist College is foreclosed under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as being among
“those involvements of religious with secular institutions which (a) serve the essentially religious activities of religious institutions; (b) employ the organs of government for essentially religious purposes; or (c) use essentially religious means to serve governmental ends, where secular means would suffice.” Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 295 (1963) (Brennan, J., concurring); Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U. S. 664, 680-681 (1970) (Brennan, J., concurring); Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 643 (1971) (Lemon I) (separate opinion of Brennan, J.).
Because under that test it is clear to me that the State’s proposed scheme of assistance to the Baptist College is violative of the Establishment Clause, I dissent.
The act authorizes a financing arrangement between the Authority2 and the Baptist College at Charleston, a South Carolina educational corporation operated by the South Carolina Baptist Convention. Under that arrangement, the College would convey a substantial portion of its campus to the Authority, and the Authority would lease back the property to the College at an agreed rental. The Authority would then issue revenue bonds of the State of South Carolina in the amount of $3,500,000, which bonds would be payable, principal *751and interest, from the rents paid by the College to the Authority under the lease. The proceeds of the sale of the bonds would be used to pay off outstanding indebtedness of the College3 and to construct additional buildings and facilities for use in its higher education operations. Upon payment in full of the principal and interest on the bonds, the arrangement requires that the Authority reconvey title to the campus properties to the College free and clear of all liens and encumbrances. The arrangement does not, however, amount merely to a mortgage on the campus property. The Authority is also empowered-, inter alia, to determine the location and character of any project financed under the act; to construct, maintain, manage, operate, lease as lessor or lessee, and regulate the same; to enter into contracts for the management and operation of such project; to establish rules and regulations for the use of the project or any portion thereof; and to fix and revise from time to time rates, rents, fees, and charges for the use of a project and for the services furnished or to be furnished by a project or any portion thereof. In other words, the College turns over to the State Authority control of substantial parts of the fiscal operation of the school— its very life’s blood.
It is true that the Act expressly provides that State financing will not be provided for
“any facility used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place of religious worship nor any facility which is used or to be used primarily in connection with any part of the program of a school or department of divinity for any religious denomi*752nation.” S. C. Code Ann. § 22-41.2 (b) (Supp. 1971).
And it is also true that the Authority, pursuant to granted rule-making power, has adopted a rule requiring that each lease agreement contain a covenant
“obligating the Institution that neither the leased land, nor any facility located thereon, shall be used for sectarian instruction or as a place of religious worship, or in connection with any part of the program of a school or department of divinity of any religious denomination.” 258 S. C., at 101, 187 S. E. 2d, at 647.
But policing by the Authority to insure compliance with these restrictions is established by a provision required to be included in the lease agreement allowing the Authority to conduct on-site inspections of the facilities financed under the act.
Thus, it is crystal clear, I think, that this scheme involves the State in a degree of policing of the affairs of the College far exceeding that called for by the statutes struck down in Lemon I, supra. See also Johnson v. Sanders, 319 F. Supp. 421 (Conn. 1970), aff’d, 403 U. S. 955 (1971). Indeed, under this scheme the policing by the State can become so extensive that the State may well end up in complete control of the operation of the College, at least for the life of the bonds. The College’s freedom to engage in religious activities and to offer religious instruction is necessarily circumscribed by this pervasive state involvement forced upon the College if it is not to lose its benefits under the Act. For it seems inescapable that the content of courses taught in facilities financed under the agreement must be closely monitored by the State Authority in discharge of its duty to ensure that the facilities are not being used for sectarian instruction. The Authority must also involve itself *753deeply in the fiscal affairs of the College, even to the point of fixing tuition rates, as part of its duty to assure sufficient revenues to meet bond and interest obligations. And should the College find itself unable to meet these obligations, its continued existence as a viable sectarian institution is almost completely in the hands of the State Authority. Thus, this agreement, with its consequent state surveillance and ongoing administrative relationships, inescapably entails mutually damaging Church-State involvements. Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U. S., at 295 (Brennan, J., concurring) ; Lemon I, 403 U. S., at 649 (separate opinion of Brennan, J.).
In support of its contrary argument, the Court adopts much of the reasoning of the plurality opinion in Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 672 (1971). I disagreed with that reasoning in Tilton because, as in this case, that reasoning utterly failed to explain how programs of surveillance and inspection of the kind common to both cases differ from the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island programs invalidated in Lemon I. What I said in Tilton is equally applicable to the present case:
“I do not see any significant difference in . . . telling the sectarian university not to teach any nonsecular subjects in a certain building, and Rhode Island's telling the Catholic school teacher [in Lemon I] not to teach religion. The vice is the creation through subsidy of a relationship in which the government polices the teaching practices of a religious school or university.” 403 U. S., at 660 (separate opinion of Brennan, J.).
In any event, Tilton is clearly not controlling here. The plurality opinion in Tilton was expressly based on the premise, erroneous in my view, that the Federal Higher Education Facilities Act contained no significant *754intrusions into the everyday affairs of sectarian educational institutions. Thus, it was said in the plurality opinion:
“[Ujnlike the direct and continuing payments under the Pennsylvania program [in Lemon I], and all the incidents of regulation and surveillance, the Government aid here is a one-time, single-purpose construction grant. There are no continuing financial relationships or dependencies, no annual audits, and no government analysis of an institution’s expenditures on secular as distinguished from religious activities.” 403 U. S., at 688.
But under the South Carolina scheme, “continuing financial relationships or dependencies,” “annual audits,” “government analysis,” and “regulation and surveillance” are the core features of the arrangement. In short, the South Carolina statutory scheme as applied to this sectarian institution presents the very sort of “intimate continuing relationship or dependency between government and religiously affiliated institutions” that in the plurality’s view was lacking in Tilton. Ibid.
Nor is the South Carolina arrangement between the State and this College any less offensive to the Constitution because it involves, as the Court asserts, no direct financial support to the College by the State. The Establishment Clause forbids far more than payment of public funds directly to support sectarian institutions. It forbids any official involvement with religion, whatever its form, which tends to foster or discourage religious worship or belief. The cases are many in which we have struck down on establishment grounds state laws that provided, not direct financial support to religious institutions, but various other forms of assistance. McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U. S. 203 (1948) (“release time” program); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S. 421 (1962) *755(prayer reading in public schools); Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203 (1963) (Bible reading in public schools). Moreover, any suggestion that the constitutionality of a statutory program to aid sectarian institutions is dependent on whether that aid can be characterized as direct or indirect is flatly refuted by the Court's decisions today in Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, post, p. 756, and Sloan v. Lemon, post, p. 825. In those cases, we went behind the mere assertion that tuition reimbursement and tax exemption programs provided no direct aid to sectarian schools and concluded that the “substantive impact” of such programs was essentially the same as a direct subsidy from the State.
The South Carolina arrangement has the identical constitutional infirmities. The State forthrightly aids the College by permitting the College to avail itself of the State's unique ability to borrow money at low interest rates, and the College, in turn, surrenders to the State a comprehensive and continuing surveillance of the educational, religious, and fiscal affairs of the College. The conclusion is compelled that this involves the State in the “essentially religious activities of religious institutions” and “employ [s] the organs of government for essentially religious purposes.” I therefore dissent and would reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

 No one denies that the Baptist College at Charleston is a “sectarian” institution — i. e., one “in which the propagation and advancement of a particular religion are a function or purpose of the institution.” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 659 (1971) (separate opinion of BreNNAN, J.).

 The South Carolina Educational Facilities Authority is composed of the members of the State Budget and Control Board, who are the Governor, the State Treasurer, the State Comptroller General, the Chairman of the Finance Committee of the State Senate, and the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the State House of Representatives. The Act states that “all the functions and powers of the Authority are hereby granted to the State Budget and Control Board as an incident of its functions in connection with the public finances of the State.” S. C. Code Ann. §22-41.3 (Supp. 1971).

 This outstanding indebtedness pertains to certain unspecified “capital improvements.” App. 49. Thus, it may be that the indebtedness was incurred for improvements to facilities used for religious purposes.