Court Opinion

ID: 9711133
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:24:55.484118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:02.446790
License: Public Domain

Conford, P. J. A. D.
(temporarily assigned), dissenting. I join Justice Clifford’s dissenting opinion and add these comments.
*137If plaintiff were an appellant here I would vote to affirm the judgment of the Appellate Division only to the extent that it rejected the appeal of the .Board of Education and I would vote to reverse that judgment to the extent that it approved provisional use of public school buildings for purposes of religious worship and religious instruction even though limited to a fixed period of time. In my judgment any use of publicly built and maintained buildings, especially public schools, for the stated purposes is antithetical to the fundamental principle of separation between church and state embedded in both the federal and State constitutions.
We are not confronted here with anything like the debatable questions of argued neutrality or secularism of purpose which have troubled the courts in such cases as Wolman v. Walter, 433 U. S. 229, 97 S. Ct. 2593, 53 L. Ed. 2d 714 (1977); Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 91 S. Ct. 2105, 29 L. Ed. 2d 745 (1971) ; Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236, 88 S. Ct. 1923, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1060 (1968); and Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 67 S. Ct. 504, 91 L. Ed. 711 (1946). Here we have the raw undissembled turning over of publicly erected and maintained public buildings for purposes of straight religious worship and instruction. The authors of the Establishment Clause did not strive merely to assure that public authorities would exact fair compensation for the use of public buildings to conduct religious exercises therein, but rather to erase any vestige of sponsorship of religious practices in such buildings. It is particularly opprobrious to countenance violation of separatism in public schools where children are taught to respect the basics of our democracy, including that fundamental principle.
Here, as was said by the Supreme Court of the situation presented in McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U. S. 203, 212, 68 S. Ct. 461, 465, 92 L. Ed. 649 (1948), “* * * the state’s tax-supported public school buildings [are] used for the dissemination of religious doctrines”; and further, *138that “* * * a state cannot consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments utilize its public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines and ideals * * id. at 211, 68 S. Ct. at 465. This is precisely, in my view, what the Court is sañctioning here. I dissent.
For reversal — Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Sullivan, Pashman, Schreiber and Handler — 5.
For affirmance — Justice Clifford and Judge Conford — -2.