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29 Adar 5759 - March 17, 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Agudas Yisroel Backs Giuliani Voucher Proposal

by B. Isaac

As controversy swirled around New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's proposed new school voucher plan, the city's Board of Education--in whose hands the fate of the proposal rests-- received a legal memo from Agudas Yisroel of America rebutting the assertion that the program would violate constitutional prohibitions against the funding of religious schools.

Mayor Giuliani used his "State of the City" address this past January to announce his plan to establish a pilot project of educational vouchers in one of the city's 32 local school districts.

Although he has not as yet revealed details of his plan, the Mayor has indicated that the experimental project would be modeled on a program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That plan uses tax dollars to provide needy parents with educational vouchers to enroll their children in any school of their choice--including religious schools.

When the Milwaukee plan was initially established, opponents mounted a legal challenge and persuaded a lower Wisconsin court that allowing religious schools to participate in the voucher program was unconstitutional.

However, this past summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision and reinstated the voucher program, emphasizing the law's secular purpose as well as its religious neutrality. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision, thereby ensuring that the Milwaukee program will stand.

Now, as Mayor Giuliani seeks to create a similar pilot project in New York City, opponents contend that the proposal would violate the strictly worded "church-state" section of the New York State constitution--which, unlike its counterpart in Wisconsin, prohibits even the "indirect" funding of religious schools.

This prohibition is being cited by many as an insurmountable barrier to the Mayor's voucher proposal.

Not so, says Agudas Yisroel in its legal memo to the Board.

As explained by the memo's author--Agudas Yisroel's Vice President for Government and Public Affairs, Chaim Dovid Zwiebel--the argument that the New York State constitution would preclude an educational voucher program is based on an outdated and faulty premise.

"It is true," asserts the Orthodox group's attorney, "that in 1938, New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals interpreted the state constitutional prohibition against `indirect' funding extremely broadly, to prohibit even the most attenuated forms of public assistance to religious schools.

"However, the 1938 ruling was explicitly repudiated and superseded in 1967, when the Court of Appeals held that indirect funding of religious schools is prohibited only if the specific purpose of the funding is to benefit those schools.

"Since the intended purpose of Mayor Giuliani's voucher proposal is not to assist religious schools but to expand the range of educational options available to needy parents, the state constitution would not bar the initiative."

According to news reports, three of the seven members of the Board of Education support the voucher proposal; three oppose; and one--Queens representative Terri Thomson--is undecided.

The chief Executive of the Board, Chancellor Rudy Crew, has announced his strong opposition to the proposal, threatening at first to resign over the issue but then withdrawing his threat when Mayor Giuliani agreed to hold back on his call for immediate Board approval of the plan.

If the Board of Education ultimately adopts the Mayor's proposal, opponents have announced that they would seek a court injunction to prevent the voucher plan from going forward.

Should that happen, says Mr. Zwiebel, "we have every intention of getting involved in the court battle."


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