The United States Supreme Court heard arguments early this
month on the permissibility of granting federal educational
benefits to religious schools.
Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
that the use of federal funds, under a program known as Title
VI, to provide religious schools with books for their
libraries, computers for their classrooms and other
"educational or instructional equipment" is
unconstitutional.
In an earlier decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
reached a contrary conclusion.
Present for the argument was Abba Cohen, director and counsel
of the Washington Office of Agudas Yisroel of America, which
advocates on behalf of Jewish schools across the nation.
Agudah participated in an amicus curiae brief urging the
Court to uphold the program as constitutionally sound.
Mr. Cohen characterized the Justices as "deeply engaged" in
the issue, which will affect an estimated one million
American schoolchildren currently attending religious
schools, and their questions as "incisive."
Mr. Cohen noted that the "wide-ranging and theoretical nature
of the questions" indicated that the "state of the law on the
matter of government aid to students in religious schools is
something of a muddle. Inconsistencies abound and the
existing precedents are therefore less than entirely
helpful."
"Hopefully, though," the Agudath Israel representative said,
"that fact itself will guide the Justices to seriously
rethink the fundamentals of the issue and affirm the common-
sense notion that American children in religious schools are
entitled to no less governmental support for their reading,
writing and arithmetic than their public school
counterparts."
The controversy surrounding the case, Mitchell vs.
Helms dates back to 1985. It involves a Catholic school
in Louisiana that received publicly funded computers,
software and library books for use in the secular studies
curriculum.
A Catholic school student's mother, concerned that her child
might encounter material that had to be "secularized" to
comply with the requirement that the computers and software
not be used to teach religious subjects, sued a
representative of the school board to contest whether the
materials ought to have been supplied at all.
A federal program requires public school districts to share
instructional equipment in a "secular, neutral and
nonideological" way with students enrolled in nearby private
or parochial schools.
But a federal appeals court in New Orleans last year struck
down the practice, saying that providing educational
materials other than textbooks for religiously affiliated
schools violates the separation of church and state.
The Clinton administration has defended the law, saying the
program has safeguards intended to prevent the equipment and
materials from being diverted for religious use.
The Supreme Court has, in the past, ruled that some materials
may be provided to parochial schools with public funding,
while others may not. The result has been an inconsistent and
sometimes confusing set of rules.
The justices' decision could potentially relate to school
voucher programs, a hot-button issue at the heart of the
debate over taxpayer funding of religious schools and long a
source of division in the Jewish community.
Court observers say it is important to watch whether the
justices decide the case narrowly, in effect "tinkering with
the margins" of how publicly funded materials are supplied to
parochial schools, or hand down a broadly rendered
decision.
A ruling in the case is anticipated next spring.
