Court Opinion

ID: 9691876
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:22:03.359152+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:27.652397
License: Public Domain

TATE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that the statutes in question are unconstitutional on their face.
I start with the premises we all must share: Acts of the legislature, the principal policy-making organ of the people, are presumed to be constitutional. In the absence of clear showing of unconstitutionality, a statute cannot be declared unconstitutional by the courts. The courts must resolve all doubts in favor of the constitutionally of a statute. They must thus defer to the solemn expression of law by the people through the legislature.
The learned majority and dissenting opinions of my brethren demonstrate that be*1103fore us is a complex and sensitive issue. Reasonable men may well differ in the resolution of these issues, at least if no weight is given to the presumption of legislative validity.
As the majority opinion correctly states, the question is primarily one of degree. Is the supplement to the pay of teachers in private schools so extensive and direct a contribution to the operation of these schools as to amount to the use of public tax funds to operate private or sectarian schools in violation of the state constitution? Is such pay to these teachers of such degree and nature as to be an aid to religious schools themselves, violating the neutrality of government with regard to religious establishments required by our state and federal constitutions — in short, is the nature and degree of this supplemental teachers’ pay such that it violates the constitutional test that there must be a secular purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion?
Generalities aside, let as look at the statutes (and the plural is used advisedly, since the acts must be read together to ascertain the legislative scheme), and then at the state constitutional provisions they are alleged to offend.
Act 223 (the Louisiana Secular Educational Act) recite the present financial crisis faced by this state in affording equal educational opportunities to all our children, and the consequent need to provide financial assistance to qualified teachers of secular subjects in nonpublic schools. The statute then provides for doing so through the state Superintendent of Public Education’s entering into contracts directly with teachers of secular (only) subjects to purchase their secular educational services for the children in nonpublic schools of the state.
The enactment further provides that such direct payments to the teachers shall not exceed the state (minimum) scale paid to public school teachers. Of some importance to resolution of the present question— whether the two statutes are unconstitutional on their face — is this further provision of Act 223: In the event total revenues appropriated are insufficient to pay the total amount of valid teacher contracts entered into, then the teachers will receive only a proportion of their pay from public funds (Section 5).1
The companion statute (Act 314) appropriates ten million dollars for this supplemental pay of teachers in private schools. As the majority recognizes, this is only a fraction of the amount needed to assure teachers in private schools of receiving the *1105same minimum salaries paid to public school teachers — perhaps 20% or less.
Reading the two statutes together, then, the legislative scheme is simply to supplement the pay of teachers in private schools by paying them a fractional portion of the minimum pay scale of public school teachers. Since we are passing on the constitutionality on their face of these statutes, we are in error if we reach beyond their terms to imagine that in operation it will or could amount to payment by the state of the- total salary of teachers in private schools 2
Viewing this actual factual and statutory context of these two enactments, in my view they clearly do not offend the state constitutional provisions cited nor the federal First Amendment’s prohibition of laws “respecting the establishment of religion”.
Article IV, Section 8, of our state constitution prohibits the taking of public funds, “directly or indirectly, in aid of any * * * religion, or in aid of any teacher, thereof, as such * * The statutes clearly specify that the funds used will only be used for teachers of secular subjects. The funds will not be used to pay teachers of religion as such. Likewise, the provision of these funds for educational purposes is for a public purpose, not for any private, charitable or benevolent purpose within the prohibition of this state constitutional section.3
Again, Article VII, Section 13 of our state constitution provides: "No appropriation of public funds shall be made to any private or sectarian school.” The present funds are not appropriated to any school; nor, considering the narrow construction to be given to restrictions of the state constitution upon the exercise of legislative power, can it reasonably be said that, by interpretation, the scope of this prohibition can be expanded to include the furnishing of *1107supplemental pay directly to teachers of children attending nonpublic schools.
The least frivolous attack upon the constitutionality of these measures is founded, in my opinion, upon the contention that they might possibly violate the separation of church and state required by the prohibitions against laws favoring the establishment of religion found in the First Amendment of our federal constitution and, in similar terms, in Article I, Section 4, of our state constitution.
Aside from the scholarly discussion in legal terms of this issue found in the majority and dissenting opinions, the provision of supplemental pay to teachers of secular (non-religious) subjects in all nonpublic schools, simply does not (in terms of the enactments themselves and of their factual and statutory context) amount to support of such nature and degree as to constitute a contribution with a primary effect of aiding religion and sectarian purposes.
The same arguments used here to reject supplemental pay for teachers of children in religious schools could equally well have been utilized to prohibit the state from providing schoolbooks and bussing for them. They have instead been rejected consistently by the courts of this state and of many jurisdictions which have considered them.
The majority errs, in my opinion, in finding the present aid to the education of children in nonpublic schools essentially different in nature and degree from the types of aid to them previously held permissible. We thus invalidate this 1970 legislature’s attempt to solve a 1970 problem, basically because it is a different approach than that used in the past. This court exceeds its function when it restricts the legislature’s choice of method to the formulae of the past.
I am not unsympathetic to the American vision of public education — that a broad education of all our children should be made possible through a system of public education, unifying in common experience the children of our nation drawn from diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Perhaps the cause of education might indeed be best advanced by devoting all available funds to the public schools of the state.
On the other hand, we are faced with present-day facts, not solely with philosophies. In fact, many of the children of our state will attend nonpublic schools. Is it better for the commoweal that these children, because of their choice of a nonpublic school or the choice of their parents, be deprived of equal education opportunities, just to preserve inviolate the theory of the single public educational system?
The question, however, involves primarily a legislative choice. After prolonged consideration and sometimes bitter debate, the 1970 legislature by a narrow majority approved the enrichment of the educational opportunities of children who attend non*1109public schools through supplementing the pay of their teachers, thus helping to assure sufficient numbers and a better quality of teachers for them.
I do not believe it to be appropriate for this court, as a sort of super-legislature, to impose its own views of this sensitive issue, and to strike down as invalid the legislature’s deliberate and solemn choice of values.
The majority errs, in my opinion: (a) by resolving doubts against the constitutionality of these enactments (contrary to our constitutional doctrines relating to the proper separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of our government) ; (b) by not recognizing that we are essentially concerned with the degree of public aid to children, in nonpublic schools, rather than with payments to religious schools or to religious teaching or other direct assistance to particular religions; and (c) by overlooking that, under the present facts and enactments, the payment of supplemental pay to teachers does not constitute establishing religious schools, payments to religious schools, or payments to teachers of religion “as such”, as would violate the constitutional prohibitions relied upon.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Rehearing denied.
HAMLIN, SUMMERS and TATE, JJ., are of the opinion that a rehearing should be granted.

. The act provides that no funds dedicated to public school suppoi’t shall be used for such purpose, and it also provides that no funds shall be so used until public school teacher salaries are fully implemented in accordance with the state scale.

. Perhaps the majority’s objection based upon fear of this result could be removed by legislative revision.
As I see it, however, we are not truly faced with such an objection to the act— that the aid to teachers will be so extensive as to amount to relieving schools of their obligation to pay teachers’ salaries and thus constitute an aid to the schools, rather than to the children through the teachers and to the teachers themselves. On their face, the statutes do not constitute such extensive aid. The courts are not faced with this issue now. If in some far distant day they are, through future enlargement of the aid, then is the time to decide that issue, not before ns now, in the context of such future times.

. Arguments similar to those advanced here were long ago rejected by this court in Borden v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 168 La. 1005, 123 So. 655, 660-661 (1929) and Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 168 La. 1030, 123 So. 664 (1929). In upholding the distribution of free textbooks to the children of the state, whether in private (including religious) or public school, we pointed out that such grant was for a public purpose, in that it was for a valid governmental aim — education; and that it was the furnishing of books to the children, not to the school.