Court Opinion

ID: 9427772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:51.342344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.606956
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
The Court in this case, I fear, takes a long step backwards in the inevitable controversy that emerges when a state legislature continues to insist on providing public aid to parochial schools.
*663I thought that the Court’s judgments in Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S. 349 (1975), and in Wolman v. Walter, 433 U. S. 229 (1977) (which the Court concedes, ante, at 654, is the controlling authority here), at last had fixed the line between that which is constitutionally appropriate public aid and that which is not. The line necessarily was not a straight one. It could not be, when this Court, on the one hand, in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1 (1947), by a 5-4 vote, decided that there was no barrier under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to parental reimbursement of the cost of fares for the transportation of children attending parochial schools, and in Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 (1968), by a 6-3 vote, ruled that New York’s lending of approved textbooks to students in private secondary schools was not viola-tive of those Amendments, and yet, on the other hand, in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971), struck down, as violative of the Religion Clauses, statutes that, respectively, would have supplemented nonpublic school teachers’ salaries and would have authorized the “purchase” of certain “secular educational services” from nonpublic schools, and also in Levitt v. Committee for Public Education, 413 U. S. 472 (1973) (Levitt I), struck down New York’s previous attempt to reimburse nonpublic schools for the expenses of tests and examinations. See also Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756 (1973), where the Court nullified New York’s financial aid programs for “maintenance and repair” of facilities and equipment, a tuition reimbursement plan, and tax relief for parents who did not qualify for tuition reimbursement, and Sloan v. Lemon, 413 U. S. 825 (1973), where the Court ruled invalid a state plan for parental reimbursement of a portion of nonpublic school tuition expenses. And see Roemer v. Maryland Public Works Bd., 426 U. S. 736 (1976).
But, I repeat, the line, wavering though it may be, was indeed drawn in Meek and in Wolman, albeit with different *664combinations of Justices, those who perceive no barrier under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and who would rule in favor of almost any aid a state legislature saw fit to provide, on the one hand, and those who perceive a broad barrier and would rule against aid of almost any kind, on the other hand, in turn joining Justices in the center on these issues, to make order and a consensus out of the earlier decisions. Now, some of those who joined in Lemon, Levitt I, Meek, and Wolman in invalidating, depart and validate. I am able to attribute this defection only to a concern about the continuing and emotional controversy and to a persuasion that a good-faith attempt on the part of a state legislature is worth a nod of approval.
I
In order properly to analyze the amended school aid plan that the New York Legislature produced in response to its defeat in Levitt I, it is imperative, it seems to me, to examine the statute’s operational details with great precision and with fewer generalities than the Court does today. One should do more than give a passing glance at selected provisions of the statute, and one should not ignore the considerations that prompted the three-judge District Court initially and unanimously to hold New York’s revised plan to be unconstitutional, Committee for Public Education v. Levitt, 414 F. Supp. 1174 (SDNY 1976) (Levitt II), and that prompted Judge Ward, in his persuasive dissent in Levitt III, Committee for Public Education v. Levitt, 461 F. Supp. 1123 (SDNY 1978), after our remand, to differ so vigorously with his two colleagues who meanwhile changed their minds, mistakenly in my view.
II
The Court, ante, at 653, and all three judges of the District Court, 461 F. Supp., at 1126, 1131, n. 1, are correct, of course, in recognizing that the “mode of analysis for Establishment *665Clause questions is defined by the three-part test that has emerged from the Court’s decisions.” Wolman v. Walter, 433 U. S., at 235-236 (plurality opinion). To pass constitutional muster under this test, the New York statute now challenged, Chapter 507, 1974 N. Y. Laws, as amended, “must have a secular legislative purpose, must have a principal or primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion, and must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.” 433 U. S., at 236.
I have no trouble in agreeing with the Court that Chapter 507 manifests a clear secular purpose. See Levitt I, 413 U. S., at 479, n. 7. I therefore would evaluate Chapter 507 under the two remaining inquiries of the three-part test.
In deciding whether Chapter 507 has an impermissible primary effect of advancing religion, or whether it fosters excessive government entanglement with sectarian affairs, one must keep in focus the nature of the assistance prescribed by the New York statute. The District Court found that $8-$10 million annually would be expended under Chapter 507, with the great majority of these funds going to sectarian schools to pay for personnel costs associated with attendance reporting. The court found that such payments would amount to from 1% to 5.4% of the personnel budget of an individual religious school receiving assistance under Chapter 507. Moreover, Chapter 507 provides direct cash payments by the State of New York to religious schools, as opposed to providing services or providing cash payments to third parties who have rendered services. And the money paid sectarian schools under Chapter 507 is designated to reimburse costs that are incurred by religious schools in order to meet basic state testing and reporting requirements, costs that would have been incurred regardless of the availability of reimbursement from the State.
This direct financial assistance provided by Chapter 507 differs significantly from the types of state aid to religious schools approved by the Court in Wolman v. Walter. For *666example, in Wolman the Court approved that portion of the Ohio statute that provided to religious schools the standardized tests and scoring services furnished to public schools. But, unlike New York’s Chapter 507, Ohio’s statute provided only the tests themselves and scoring by employees of neutral testing organizations. It did not authorize direct financial aid of any type to religious schools. Wolman v. Walter, 433 U. S., at 238-239, and n. 7 (plurality opinion).
Similarly, the other forms of assistance upheld in Wolman did not involve direct cash assistance. Rather, the Court approved the State’s providing sectarian school students therapeutic, remedial, and guidance programs administered by public employees on public property. It also approved certain public health services furnished by public employees to religious school pupils, even though administered in part on the sectarian premises, on the basis of its recognition in a number of cases, see, e. g., Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S., at 364, 368, n. 17, that provision of health services to all schoolchildren does not advance religion so as to contravene the Establishment Clause. 433 U. S., at 241-248. And it upheld the lending by Ohio of textbooks to pupils under the “unique presumption,” id., at 252, n. 18, created by Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 (1968), and reaffirmed since that time. E. g., Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S., at 359-362 (plurality opinion); id., at 388 (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).
It is clear, however, that none of the programs upheld in Wolman provided direct financial support to sectarian schools. At the very least, then, the Court’s holding today goes further in approving state assistance to sectarian schools than the Court had gone in past decisions. But beyond merely failing to approve the type of direct financial aid at issue in this case, Wolman reaffirmed the finding of the Court in Meek v. Pit-tenger that direct aid to the educational function of religious schools necessarily advances the sectarian enterprise as a whole. *667Thus, the Court in Wolman invalidated Ohio’s practice of loaning instructional materials directly to sectarian schools, “even though the loan ostensibly was limited to neutral and secular instructional material and equipment, '[because] it inescapably had the primary effect of providing a direct and substantial advancement of the sectarian enterprise.” 433 U. S., at 250. In the same vein, the Court disapproved Ohio’s provision of field-trip transportation directly to religious schools as impermissible direct aid that, because of the pervasively religious nature of the schools involved, furthered the religious goals of the schools, and that also required government surveillance of expenditures to such a degree as to foster entanglement of the State in religion. Id., at 252-255.
Wolman thus re-enforces the conclusion that substantial direct financial aid to a religious school, even though ostensibly for secular purposes, runs the great risk of furthering the religious mission of the school as a whole because that religious mission so pervades the functioning of the school. The Court specifically recognized this in Meek:
“[F]aced with the substantial amounts of direct support authorized by [the statute at issue], it would simply ignore reality to attempt to separate secular educational functions from the predominantly religious role performed by many . . . church-related elementary and secondary schools and to then characterize [the statute] as channeling aid to the secular without providing direct aid to the sectarian. Even though earmarked for secular purposes, ‘when it flows to an institution in which religion is so pervasive that a substantial portion of its functions are subsumed in the religious mission,’ state aid has the impermissible primary effect of advancing religion. Hunt v. McNair, 413 U. S. 734, 743.” 421 U. S., at 365-366.
See Wolman v. Walter, 433 U. S., at 249-250; Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413 U. S., at 781-783, and n. 39.
*668Under the principles announced in these decided cases, I am compelled to conclude that Chapter 507, by providing substantial financial assistance directly to sectarian schools, has a primary effect of advancing religion. The vast majority of the schools aided under Chapter 507 typify the religious-pervasive institution the very purpose of which is to provide an integrated secular and sectarian education. The aid provided by Chapter 507 goes primarily to reimburse such schools for personnel costs incurred in complying with state reporting and testing requirements, costs that must be incurred if the school is to be accredited to provide a combined sectarian-secular education to school-age pupils. To continue to function as religious schools, sectarian schools thus are required to incur the costs outlined in § 3 of Chapter 507, or else lose accreditation by the State of New York. See, e. g., N. Y. Educ. Law §§ 3210, 3211 (McKinney 1970). These reporting and testing requirements would be met by the schools whether reimbursement were available or not. As such, the attendance, informational, and testing expenses compensated by Chapter 507 are essential to the overall educational functioning of sectarian schools in New York in the same way instruction in secular subjects is essential. Therefore, just as direct aid for ostensibly secular purposes by provision of instructional materials or direct financial subsidy is forbidden by the Establishment Clause, so direct aid for the performance of recordkeeping and testing activities that are an essential part of the sectarian school’s functioning also is interdicted. The Court stated in Meek, and reaffirmed in Wolman:
“The very purpose of many [religious] 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. See Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S., at 616-617. Substantial aid to the educational function of such schools, accordingly, necessarily results in aid to the sectarian school enterprise as *669a 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.’ Id., at 657 (opinion of Brennan, J.).” 421 U. S., at 366, quoted in 433 U. S., at 249-250.
It is also true that the keeping of pupil attendance records is essential to the religious mission of sectarian schools. To ensure that the school is fulfilling its religious mission properly, it is necessary to provide a way. to determine whether pupils are attending the sectarian classes required of them. Accordingly, Chapter 507 not only advances religion by aiding the educational mission of the sectarian school as a whole; it also' subsidizes directly the religious mission of such schools. Chapter 507 makes no attempt, and none is possible, to separate the portion of the overall expense of attendance-taking attributable to the desire to ensure that students are attending religious instruction from that portion attributable to the desire to ensure that state attendance laws are complied with. This type of direct aid the Establishment Clause does not permit. Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413 U. S., at 77A-780; Levitt I, 413 U. S., at 480.
I thus would hold that the aid provided by Chapter 507 constitutes a direct subsidy of the operating costs of the sectarian school that aids the school as a whole, and that the statute therefore directly advances religion in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Ill
Beyond this, Chapter 507 also fosters government entanglement with religion to an impermissible extent. Unlike Wol-man, under Chapter 507 sectarian employees are compensated by the State for grading examinations. In some cases, such grading requires the teacher to exercise subjective judgment. For the State properly to ensure that judgment is *670not exercised to inculcate religion, a “comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance will inevitably be required.” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S., at 619.
Moreover, Chapter 507 provides for continuing reimbursement with regard to examinations in which the questions may vary from year to year, and for examinations that may be offered in the future. This will require the State continually to evaluate the examinations to ensure that reimbursement for expenses incurred in connection with their administration and grading will not offend the First Amendment. This, too, fosters impermissible government involvement in sectarian affairs, since it is likely to lead to continuing adjudication of disputes between the State and others as to whether certain questions or new examinations present such opportunities for the advancement of religion that reimbursement for administering and grading them should not be permitted. Cf. New York v. Cathedral Academy, 434 U. S. 125 (1977).
Finally, entanglement also is fostered by the system of reimbursement for personnel expenses. The State must make . sure that it reimburses sectarian schools only for those personnel costs attributable to the sectarian employees’ secular activities described in § 3 of Chapter 507. It is difficult to see how the State adequately may discover whether the time for which reimbursement is made available was devoted only to secular activities without some type of ongoing surveillance of the sectarian employees and religious schools at issue. It is this type of extensive entanglement that the Establishment Clause forbids. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S., at 617-621. I fail to see, and I am uncomfortable with, the so-called “ample safeguards,” ante, at 659, upon which the Court and the District Court’s majority, Levitt III, 461 F. Supp., at 1131, are content to rest so assured.
I therefore conclude that Chapter 507 has a primary effect of advancing religion and also fosters excessive government entanglement with religion. The statute, consequently, is unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause, *671at least to the extent it provides reimbursement directly to sectarian nonpublic schools.
I would reverse the judgment of the District Court.