Court Opinion

ID: 9611321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:55:14.236243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:12.962396
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Chief Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The basic question we have to decide is whether the Pennsylvania Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act, No. 109 of June 19, 1968, 24 P.S. § 5601 et seq., on its face and construed in the light of certain factual allegations of the present complaint which must be deemed correct on motion to dismiss the complaint, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Act provides that the state shall pay public funds to applying “nonpublic” elementary and secondary schools to reimburse them for having rendered “secular educational service” through the teaching of certain subjects; namely, mathematics, modern foreign languages, physical science and physical education. Reimbursement to a school is authorized only for the cost of teachers’ salaries, textbooks and instructional materials after and to the extent that such costs have actually been incurred by the institution.
The complaint alleges that the great majority of the schools eligible for subsidies under the Act are affiliated with or under the control or direction of churches or are in other respects sectarian schools or schools which teach religion and that the primary purpose as well as the principal effect of the Act is thus to aid religious institutions. For purposes of the present motion the majority opinion properly accepts as factually correct the complaint's allegations as to the religious and sectarian character of most of the schools intended to receive and actually receiving state grants-in-aid under the Act. However, that opinion characterizes as an allegation of law, and therefore refuses to accept as correct, the allegation that the primary purpose and principal effect of the Act is thus to aid institutions of religion. Instead, the majority seems to view the question of the purpose and effect of the statute as foreclosed by declarations in the statute itself that the legislative purpose is “to promote the welfare of the people of the Commonwealth” and “to promote the secular education of children of the Commonwealth of Penn*50sylvania attending nonpublic schools”. With this I cannot agree.1 But even if inquiry as to purpose and effect should be confined to examination of the language and scheme of the statute, I cannot avoid the conclusion that the primary purpose and effect of the enactment is to help the nonpublic schools by supplying them with needed financial aid, while whatever promotion of the public welfare is anticipated as a result of such public assistance is at best an incidental consequence claimed in justification of the state’s action.
It merits mention at this point that both the statutory text and the majority opinion make much of the concept that the state “contracts to purchase secular educational services”. Actually, this phrase is not descriptive of the statutory scheme. A nonpublic school that desires financial aid under the Act need do no more than submit, on a form prescribed by the state, an application designating the portions of its curriculum for which it wants assistance. The State Superintendent of Education then agrees that the state will do what the statute requires, namely, pay the school such sums as Act No. 109 entitles it to receive. This is the so-called “contract”. The school need not undertake to enlarge its curriculum or to increase its enrollment. Indeed, it can decrease its enrollment and diminish its curriculum and still qualify for state subsidy. It merely goes through a prescribed procedure in asking for aid and later proving that it has made expenditures that are reimbursable under the Act, without ever obligating itself to do anything for or in the interest of the state. The state buys no services and the school sells none. The artificial characterization of this procedure as “contracting for secular educational services” does not help solve our constitutional problem.
Certainly the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment does not preelude the state from providing any assistance, no matter how indirect, to religious institutions. As the majority opinion correctly indicates, religion’s interest and the state’s interest in the public good necessarily overlap. In contemporary experience churches and other religious institutions characteristically, and to their great credit, conceive their mission and undertake their ministry through various social means additional to the fundament of worship. The providing of shelter and care for the needy and aged, education for youth, and other social services for the community are all deemed an important part of organized church work. Yet, in the modern welfare state, similar activities have long since won recognition as important governmental functions and responsibilities, from the performance and discharge of which religious institutions with like undertakings may derive incidental benefits. Thus, where the state has supplied all school children with transportation arid books, sectarian educational enterprises are indirectly aided by being relieved of a financial burden which they might otherwise feel obligated to bear. In Everson v. Board of Education, 1947, 330 U.S. 1, 67 S.Ct. 504, 91 L.Ed. 711, and Board of Education v. Allen, 1968, 392 U.S. 236, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060, the Supreme Court recognized that the Constitution does not preclude a state from thus providing public services directly to its people merely because such services incidently aid religious institutions. However, these cases do not suggest that the Constitution permits direct public financing of a religious enterprise merely because such aid also benefits the state.
It is unrealistic to view the present statute as merely subsidizing secular instruction and thus only incidentally benefiting religious institutions by releasing their funds for religious purposes. The primary purpose for which *51sectarian schools formulate and offer a comprehensive curriculum apart from the public school system is religious. Through a total educational program offered in a separate religious environment, sectarian schools serve to inculcate and reinforce in children doctrine and moral precepts derived from the tenets of the church. It is not necessary to inquire whether, for the fulfillment of this primary religious purpose every course is taught with religious overtones. The crucial consideration is that the total teaching program is offered in a separate religious environment and for the better achievement of appropriate religious objectives. When the state reimburses a sectarian school for any part of the curricular costs of such a teaching program it directly finances and supports a religious enterprise. Constitutionally, such subsidizing of a religious enterprise is not essentially different from a payment of public funds into the treasury of a church. Such a prohibited involvement of the state in a religious undertaking is not validated merely because the religious enterprise itself incidentally relieves the state of the cost of educating many children.
Even more important than the foregoing analytical distinction are the constitutionally significant consequential distinctions betwen the present statute and those considered in the Everson and AUen cases. The statute in this case, much more than those in Everson and Allen, invites religious groups and organizations to act politically and involves the state intrusively in the affairs of religious institutions.
It has already been pointed out that sectarian schools are only part of the complex of activities, many of them as “secular” as the teaching of languages and physical science, which modern churches and religious institutions finance and conduct. Charities, hospitals, community centers and homes for the aged and infirm are familiar examples. The theory that would validate Act No. 109 also unavoidably validates state subsidies for all such enterprises of religious organizations, as well as subsidies for all of the “secular” parts of sectarian education not included in the present statute. If the constitutional bar to state grants in all such cases should be removed, it is reasonable to anticipate continuing political controversy in every state and local community whether and to what extent public funds are to be granted to subsidize a large number and a broad range of activities of religious organizations. Leaders and devout members of various organized religious groups will see it as their duty to their church or sect to seek such aid and to insist that state and local government contribute liberally to their sectarian enterprises. Legislators, government executives and candidates for elective office in whose judgment other claims upon the public purse merit higher priority can anticipate political opposition as enemies of the faith. In this way religion and politics will become in pari materia.
So far we have escaped much of the divisiveness and antagonism of political differences and controversies about religious matters because public financing of activities of religious organizations has been understood to be prohibited by our Constitution. Professor Paul Freund has perceptively pointed out that President Kennedy was able to avoid taking a political position upon issues of religious character by relying upon authoritative decisions on the constitutional separation of state and religion as controlling. Freund, Public Aid to Parochial Schools, 1969, 82 Harv.L.Rev. 1680, 1692. But if the present statute is held to be constitutional, I see no escape from the evils that attend a widespread and pervasive intermingling of politics and religion.
The other side of the coin is the inevitability of state intrusion into the affairs of organized religion in the administration of the present statute. As already stated, it is the justifying imperative of most, if not all, church-sponsored and controlled education that formal education shall serve to inculcate *52and reinforce in youthful minds sectarian doctrine and moral precepts derived from the tenets of the church.2 In schools with such a mission it is appropriate, practically unavoidable, that admission policies and practices reflect a preference for enrollment of children of the sponsoring faith, though not necessarily excluding all others. Yet, once the state joins in financing such education, the mandated equalitarian position of the state must result in state imposition of strictly non-discriminatory admission standards consistent with public duty,3 whatever sacrifice of appropriate religious objectives may result. I cannot square such state intrusion into religious affairs with the concept of separation of church and state which the First Amendment implements.
The same is true in the matter of curriculum. If the state is to finance “secular” teaching in parochial and other church-related schools, the state must have the power and responsibility of monitoring curriculum and instruction to assure that teaching in these state-supported areas is not so oriented as to inculcate sectarian or religious tenets or doctrines. Indeed, Act No. 109 expressly provides for state approval of text books and teaching materials in all subsidized schools. The substantiality of this involvement is indicated by Mr. Justice Douglas in the course of his dissent in Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 258-262, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060, where he elaborates numbers of instructive examples of sectarian orientation in teaching materials appropriately used in the teaching of “secular” subjects in church-related schools. The extent to which religious orientation of secular subjects will become an appropriate subject of state inquiry is also suggested by interrogatories which the plaintiffs in this suit have addressed to the defendant schools. For example, the church-related schools have been asked to disclose the extent to which sectarian precepts are involved in the teaching of secular subjects; whether teachers of such subjects are clerics, and what religious materials and symbols are used or displayed in the schools in connection with activities other, than religious ceremonies. It is difficult to imagine a type of intrusion by the state more offensive to a religious community than such pervasive monitoring and investigation of instruction and academic organization in order to purge the secular areas of the curriculum of religious orientation. Yet, it is to just such intrusion that the Pennsylvania statute opens the door, if by necessary implication it does not go farther and mandate the entry of state overseers as the only means by which the state can adequately check upon the initial and continuing eligibility of particular “secular” instruction for state financing.4
Mr. Justice Goldberg, in School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 1963, 374 U.S. 203, 307, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 1616, 10 L.Ed.2d 844 and Mr. Jus*53tice Harlan, in Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 249, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060, have both expressed what I believe to be a sound rationalization that the First Amendment is violated by state action which will “involve the state so significantly and directly in the realm of the sectarian as to give rise to those very divisive influences and inhibitions of freedom which both religion clauses of the First Amendment preclude.” I am unable to avoid the conclusion that the state undertaking authorized by Act No. 109 would thus intolerably involve the state in the realm of the sectarian.
It must also be considered that some of the schools eligible for aid under Act No. 109 appear to be nonsectarian private schools which do not include religious training in their educational programs. Obviously, the First Amendment does not debar state aid to such schools. However, the plaintiffs allege and seek to prove statistically that only a very small minority of the eligible schools are of this character and that this fact and the legislative history of the statute combine to show that the primary purpose and effect of the legislation is to aid sectarian schools. I think the plaintiffs should be permitted to show, if they can, that the inclusion of nonseetarian private schools as institutions eligible for state aid is so minor and incidental an aspect of the statutory scheme that it cannot validate the enactment.
It remains to consider the claim that subsidizing the defendant nonpublic schools as authorized by the statute would deny the plaintiffs the equal protection of the laws. I agree with the majority that the organizational plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the legislative scheme under either the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause. I also agree that no individual plaintiff alleges that any discrimination practiced by any of the defendant schools affects him or his children in a way that would give him standing to litigate the equal protection issue.
Finally, while I agree with the majority that plaintiff Lemon does and the other individual plaintiffs do not have standing to litigate the alleged violation of the Establishment Clause on the basis of the requirements enunciated by the Supreme Court in Flast v. Cohen, 1967, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947, .my reasoning is somewhat different and leads to the conclusion that, except for Lemon, the individual plaintiffs lack standing under the Free Exercise Clause even more clearly than under the Establishment Clause.
In Flast v. Cohen, federal income taxpayers alleged that the expenditure of federal funds under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to finance instruction in sectarian schools and to purchase educational materials for use in such schools violated the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The taxpayers’ bill for a declaratory judgment and an injunction was dismissed by a three-judge district court for lack of standing. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the plaintiffs had satisfied the requirements of a logical connection between their status as taxpayers and both “the type of legislative enactment attacked” and “the precise nature of the constitutional infringement alleged”. 392 U.S. at 102, 88 S.Ct. at 1954. The Supreme Court relied principally on its finding that the Establishment Clause was designed to limit the taxing and spending powers of Congress and spécifically declined to decide whether the taxpayers’ free exercise claim alone would confer standing. 392 U.S. at 104 n. 25, 88 S.Ct. 1942.
In this case, the ultimate source of funds for the challenged payments under Act No. 109, and the only source, is the admission tax on harness races, 15 P.S. § 2606 (1967), and on thoroughbi’ed races, 15 P.S. § 2656 (Supp. 1969). Plaintiff Lemon alleges that he has paid an admission fee to a harness race, including the tax. All three individual plaintiffs allege that “[i]t is against [their] religious conscience to be forced by operation of the taxing power into *54contributing to the propagation of religion or for the support of sectarian schools”. The majority opinion apparently construes the latter allegation to mean that, except for Lemon, the individual plaintiffs have refrained from attending the races because to do so would require them to support parochial education. However, the complaint contains no factual allegation that these plaintiffs desire to go to the races and have been deterred by reason of the known application of the racing revenues to the purposes of Act No. 109, and none of the individual plaintiffs has alleged any particular religious belief or any effect of Act No. 109 on the practice of a particular religion.
The individual plaintiffs other than Lemon can only be considered “taxpayers” within the scope of the standing requirements of Flast v. Cohen, if their “tax money is being extracted and spent in violation of specific constitutional protections * * 392 U.S. at 106, 88 S.Ct. at 1955. The plaintiffs who have not attended horse races have not alleged that their “tax money is being extracted” by Act No. 109 unless by virtue of a theoretical increase in general tax requirements that might result from the failure to allocate racing revenues to general expenses. However, Flast v. Cohen pointed out that where a challenged tax operates “upon a particular class of taxpayers * * * the proper party emphasis in the federal standing doctrine would require that standing be limited to the taxpayers within the affected class.” 392 U.S. at 104 n. 25, 88 S.Ct. at 1955. Although the Supreme Court was referring to taxpayer standing under the Free Exercise Clause in the quoted dictum, the required nexus between taxpayer status and “the type of legislative enactment attacked”, 392 U.S. at 102, 88 S.Ct. at 1954, also depends on actual or threatened liability for a tax in a challenge under the Establishment Clause. In order to have “the requisite personal stake in the outcome”, 392 U.S. at 101, 88 S.Ct. at 1953, the plaintiffs should have an established monetary interest in the relief sought, rather than an interest that will be realized only if judicial action enjoining expenditures supported by a particular tax program to which plaintiffs are not subject shall result in a decrease in general tax burdens. Therefore, the individual plaintiffs other than Lemon do not have taxpayer standing to challenge Act No. 109 under either of the religious clauses because they do not contribute revenues disbursed under the Act, and are not “taxpayers within the affected class.”
On the other hand, such a taxpayer as plaintiff Lemon, who is subject to the tax program that supports the particular statutory scheme sought to be enjoined, “may or may not have the requisite personal stake in the outcome * * 392 U.S. at 101, 88 S.Ct. at 1953. Focusing upon the nexus between Lemon’s status as a taxpayer and “the precise nature of the constitutional infringement alleged”, 392 U.S. at 102, 88 S.Ct. at 1954, Lemon does complain that he has been required to contribute in support of an establishment. Although Lemon was not compelled to attend a harness race, he has been constrained by the state government to pay a tax on his attendance, a tax that is specifically earmarked by statute for purposes that allegedly support an establishment of religion. In view of the primary function of the Establishment Clause in restraining taxation and disbursement in support of religion, the tax Lemon has paid possesses a sufficient connection to the challenged expenditures under Act No. 109 and to the alleged constitutional infirmity of the Act to lend the requisite specificity and adverseness to his claim. Accordingly, I conclude that plaintiff Lemon has standing to attack the validity of the legislation under the Establishment Clause.
As to all plaintiffs I would dismiss so much of the claim as alleges a violation of the Equal Protection Clause because of lack of standing to sue. However, in my view, the allegations of the complaint disclose a legislative scheme violative of the Establishment Clause of the First
*55Amendment, as to which plaintiff Lemon Lemon’s First Amendment claim, the alone shows standing to complain. As to motion to dismiss should be denied.
APPENDIX A
§ 5601. Short title
This act shall be known and may be cited as the “Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act.”
1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 1.
Title of Act:
An Act to promote the welfare of the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; to promote the secular education of children of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania attending; nonpublic schools; creating; a Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund to finance the purchase of secular educational services from nonpublic schools located within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the benefit of residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; authorizing the Superintendent of Public Instruction to enter into contracts to carry out the intent and purposes of this act, and to establish such rules and regulations as are necessary; providing for the payment of administrative costs incident to the operation of the act; providing procedures for reimbursement in payment for the rendering of secular educational service; and designating a portion of revenues of the State Harness Racing Fund and of the State Horse Racing Fund as the sources of funds. 1968, June 19, P.L. -, No. 109.
§ 5602. Legislative finding; declaration of policy
It is hereby determined and declared as a matter of legislative finding—
(1) That a crisis in elementary and secondary education exists in the Nation and in the Commonwealth involving (i) the new recognition of our intellectual and cultural resources as prime national assets and of the national imperative now to spur the maximum educational development of every young American’s capacity; (ii) rapidly increasing costs occasioned by the rise in school population, consequent demands for more teachers and facilities, new but costly demands, in the endeavor for excellence, upon education generally; the general impact of inflation upon the economy; and the struggle of the Commonwealth, commonly with many other states, to find sources by which to finance education, while also attempting to bear the mounting financial burden of the many other areas of modern State governmental responsibility;
(2) That nonpublic education in the Commonwealth today, as during past recent decades, bears the burden of educating more than twenty percent of all elementary and secondary school pupils in Pennsylvania; that the requirements of the compulsory school attendance laws of the Commonwealth are fulfilled through nonpublic education;
(3) That the elementary and secondary education of children is today recognized as a public welfare purpose; that nonpublic education, through providing instruction in secular subjects, makes an important contribution to the achieving of such public welfare purpose; that the governmental duty to support the achieving of public welfare purposes in education may be in part fulfilled through government’s support of those purely secular educational objectives achieved through nonpublic education;
(4) That freedom to choose nonpublic education, meeting reasonable State standards, for a child is a fundamental parental liberty and a basic right;
(5) That the Commonwealth has the right and freedom, in the fulfillment of its duties, to enter into contracts for the purchase of needed services with persons or institutions whether public or nonpublic, sectarian or nonsectarian;
(6) That, should a majority of parents of the present nonpublic school population desire to remove their children to the public schools of the *56Commonwealth, an intolerable added financial burden to the public would result, as well as school stoppages and long term derangement and impairment of education in Pennsylvania; that such hazard to the education of children may be substantially reduced and all education in the Commonwealth improved through the purchase herein provided of secular educational services from Pennsylvania nonpublic schools.
1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 2.
§ 5603. Definitions
The following terms whenever used or referred to in this act shall have the following meanings, except in those instances where the context clearly indicates otherwise:
(1) “Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund” shall mean the fund created by this act.
(2) “Secular educational service” shall mean the providing of instruction in a secular subject.
(3) “Secular subject” shall mean any course which is presented in the curricula of the public schools of the Commonwealth and shall not include any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect.
(4) “Nonpublic school” shall mean any school, other than a public school within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, wherein a resident of the Commonwealth may legally fulfill the compulsory school attendance requirements of law.
(5) “Purchase secular educational service” shall mean the purchase by the Superintendent of Public Instruction from a nonpublic school, pursuant to contract, of secular educational service at the reasonable cost thereof.
(6) “Reasonable cost” shall mean the actual cost to a nonpublic school of providing a secular educational service and shall be deemed to include solely the cost pertaining thereto of teachers’ salaries, textbooks and instructional materials.
1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 3.
§ 5604. Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund
There is hereby created for the special purpose of this act a Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund dedicated, to the particular use of purchasing secular educational service consisting of courses solely in the following subjects: mathematics, modern foreign languages, physical science, and physical education, provided, however, that as a condition for payment by the Superintendent of Public Instruction for secular educational service rendered hereunder, the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall establish that (i) solely textbooks and other instructional materials approved by the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall have been employed in the instruction rendered; (ii) a satisfactory level of pupil performance in standardized tests approved by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, shall have been attained; (iii) after five years following the effective date of this act, the secular educational service for which reimbursement is sought was rendered by teachers holding certification approved by the Department of Public Instruction as equal to the standards of this Commonwealth for teachers in the public schools: Provided, however, That any such service rendered by a teacher who, at the effective date of this act, was a full time teacher in a nonpublic school, shall be deemed to meet this condition.
. 1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 4.
§ 5605. Administration
The administration of this act shall be under the direction of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who shall establish rules and regulations pertaining thereto, make contracts of every name and number, and execute all instruments necessary or convenient for the purchase of *57secular educational service hereunder. All expenses incurred in connection with the administration of this act shall be paid solely out of the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund and no money raised for the support of the public schools of the Commonwealth shall be used in connection with the administration of this act.
1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 5.
§ 5606. Moneys for fund
(a) Permanent Moneys. Into the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund shall be paid each year:
(1) All proceeds from horse racing up to the first ten million dollars ($10,000,000) realized by the State Horse Racing Fund established by the act of December 11, 1967 (Act No. 331),l remaining after, and not required for, payment of all of the items of administrative cost set forth in subsection (b) of section 18 of that act,2 plus
(2) One-half of all such horse racing proceeds in excess of the sum of ten million dollars ($10,000,000), the remaining half thereof to be paid into the General Fund.
(b) Temporáry Moneys. Until the time that proceeds in the amount of ten million dollars ($10,000,000) shall, in a given fiscal year, have been paid into the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund as provided for under subsection (a) of section 6 hereof,3 three-fourths of the proceeds from harness racing realized by the State Harness Racing Fund established by the act of December 22, 1959 (P.L. 1978), as amended,4 remaining after and not required for, the payments provided for in subsections (b) and (d) of section 16 of that act,5 shall be paid into the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund according to the following formula:
(1) The entire three-fourths of the harness racing proceeds for any fiscal year shall be paid into the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund until such year as the horse racing proceeds designated by this section for the said fund are of such amount that, combined with the harness racing proceeds, the sum of ten million dollars ($10,000,000) shall have been realized by the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund.
(2) Proceeds from harness racing shall cease to be paid into the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund for any fiscal year in which proceeds from horse racing, designated by this section for the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund, shall equal ten million dollars ($10,000,000).
Moneys in the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund are hereby appropriated to the Department of Public Instruction to be used by the Superintendent of Public Instruction solely for the purchase of secular educational service hereunder and administrative expenses pertaining thereto as provided for in section 5 of this act. 6 1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 6.
115 P.S. § 2651 et seq.
215 P.S. § 2668.
s This section.
4 15 P.S. § 2601 et seq.
= 15 P.S. § 2616.
o Section 5605 oí this title.
§ 5607. Reimbursement procedures
(a) Requests for reimbursement in payment for the purchase of secular educational service hereunder shall be made on such forms and under such conditions as the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall prescribe. Any nonpublic school seeking such reimbursement shall maintain such accounting procedures, including maintenance of separate funds and accounts pertaining to the cost of secular educational service, as to establish that it actually expended in support of such service an amount of money equal to the amount of money sought in reimbursement. Such *58accounts shall be subject to audit by the Auditor General. Reimbursement payments shall be made by the Superintendent of Public Instruction in four equal installments payable on the first day of September, December, March and June of the school term following the school term in which the secular educational service was rendered.
(b) Reimbursements for any fiscal year for the purchase of secular educational service hereunder shall not exceed the total amount of the moneys which were actually paid into the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund in that fiscal year.
(c) In the event that, in any fiscal year, the total amount of moneys which were actually paid into the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund shall be insufficient to pay the total amount of validated requests hereunder in reimbursement for that year, reimbursements shall be made in that proportion which the total amount of such requests bears to the total amount of moneys in the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund.
(d) The Budget Secretary shall, by July fifteenth of each year, certify to the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the total amount of money in the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Fund.
1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 7.
§ 5608. Effective date
This act shall take effect July 1, 1968. 1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, §8.
§ 5609. Severability
If a part of this act is invalid, all valid parts that are severable from the invalid part remain in effect. If a part of this act is invalid in one or l more of its applications, the part remains in effect in all valid applications that are severable from the invalid applications.
1968, June 19, P.L.-, No. 109, § 9.
i Enrolled bill reads “of”,
CA9103

. This is not a disposition on summary judgment where the factual posture of the case is established by affidavits and exhibits. Here decision is controlled by the allegations of the complaint and our judgment as to the potentiality of proof thereunder.

. See L. Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom, 1953, 290-300. See also Rev. S. Woywood, The New Canon Law, under imprimatur of Most Rev. Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York, and others (1940), quoted in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 18, 22-23, 67 S.Ct. 504, 91 L.Ed. 711 (Jackson, J., dissenting) .

. Cf. Evans v. Newton, 1966, 382 U.S. 296, 86 S.Ct. 486, 15 L.Ed.2d 373; Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 1961, 365 U.S. 715, 81 S.Ct. 856, 6 L.Ed. 2d 45; Cooper v. Aaron, 1958, 358 U.S. 1, 16-19, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 3 L.Ed.2d 5; Pennsylvania v. Board of Directors of City Trusts, 1957, 353 U.S. 230, 77 S.Ct. 806, 1 L.Ed.2d 792; Kerr v. Enoch Pratt Free Library, 4th Cir. 1945, 149 F.2d 212.
It is difficult to see how the provision of the Pennsylvania Fair Educational Opportunities Act that sanctions religious discrimination in admission policies and practices of sectarian schools, 24 P.S. § 5004(e), could validly be applied to sectarian schools that receive public financing under Act No. 109.

. Act No. 109 explicitly restricts state aid to courses which “shall not include any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect.”