Board of Education v. Allen (1968)
Supreme Court Decisions on Religious Liberty
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Background Information
New York's Education Law required local public school authorities to lend textbooks free of charge to all students in grades 7 to 12, eveb those attending private schools.
Some local school boards challenged this regulation, arguing that it violated both State and Federal constitutions. The boards asked for an an order barring the Commissioner of Education (Allen) from removing boardmembers from office for failing to comply with the regulation, and an order that stopped any use of state funds to buy textbooks that would be lent to parochial students.
A trial court found in favor of the school boards, an appellate court reversed this decision, and the New York Court of Appeals agreed that the regulation was constitutional.
Court Decision
The Supreme Court gave six reasons why the law in question did not violate the Establishment Clause:
- The primary purpose of the statute was to advance education in general, not advance religious education in particular.
- There was no evidence of specifically religious books being loaned.
- Parochial schools also perform the task of secular education, and so helping them does not automatically help religion.
- There is no evidence of unconstitutional state involvement with religion.
- There is no evidence of anyone being coerced into the practice of religion.
The focus of the Court decision was mostly the fact that the law had a secular purpose:
The express purpose of 701 was stated by the New York Legislature to be furtherance of the educational opportunities available to the young. Appellants have shown us nothing about the necessary effects of the statute that is contrary to its stated purpose. The law merely makes available to all children the benefits of a general program to lend school books free of charge. Books are furnished at the request of the pupil and ownership remains, at least technically, in the State. Thus no funds or books are furnished to parochial schools, and the financial benefit is to parents and children, not to schools.
Justice Black strongly dissented from this decision, arguing that Court precedent makes it plain that no taxpayer should be compelled to pay money to the government for the purpose of supporting either religion generally or agencies of any religious organization:
The Everson and McCollum cases plainly interpret the First and Fourteenth Amendments as protecting the taxpayers of a State from being compelled to pay taxes to their government to support the agencies of private religious organizations the taxpayers oppose. To authorize a State to tax its residents for such church purposes is to put the State squarely in the religious activities of certain religious groups that happen to be strong enough politically to write their own religious preferences and prejudices into the laws. This links state and churches together in controlling the lives and destinies of our citizenship - a citizenship composed of people of myriad religious faiths, some of them bitterly hostile to and completely intolerant of the others. It was to escape laws precisely like this that a large part of the Nation's early immigrants fled to this country. It was also to escape such laws and such consequences that the First Amendment was written in language strong and clear barring passage of any law "respecting an establishment of religion."
Black also disagreed with the finding that providing books to school children was in any way analogous to providing bus fare for them, thus denying that Everson v. Board of Education constitutes a precedent which allows for the current decision. For Black, bus fares are incidental to education while books are essential to it.
The First Amendment's bar to establishment of religion must preclude a State from using funds levied from all of its citizens to purchase books for use by sectarian schools, which, although "secular," realistically will in some way inevitably tend to propagate the religious views of the favored sect. Books are the most essential tool of education since they contain the resources of knowledge which the educational process is designed to exploit. In this sense it is not difficult to distinguish books, which are the heart of any school, from bus fares, which provide a convenient and helpful general public transportation service. With respect to the former, state financial support actively and directly assists the teaching and propagation of sectarian religious viewpoints in clear conflict with the First Amendment's establishment bar; with respect to the latter, the State merely provides a general and nondiscriminatory transportation service in no way related to substantive religious views and beliefs.
Justice Douglas, in his own dissent, made the same point, emphasizing the risks inherent to the body politic when religious groups have their ideology funded by the government:
Whatever may be said of Everson, there is nothing ideological about a bus. There is nothing ideological about a school lunch, or a public nurse, or a scholarship. The constitutionality of such public aid to students in parochial schools turns on considerations not present in this textbook case. The textbook goes to the very heart of education in a parochial school. It is the chief, although not solitary, instrumentality for propagating a particular religious creed or faith. How can we possibly approve such state aid to a religion? A parochial school textbook may contain many, many more seeds of creed and dogma than a prayer. Yet we struck down in Engel v. Vitale, an official New York prayer for its public schools, even though it was not plainly denominational. For we emphasized the violence done the Establishment Clause when the power was given religious-political groups "to write their own prayers into law." That risk is compounded here by giving parochial schools the initiative in selecting the textbooks they desire to be furnished at public expense.
Black concluded his dissent by arguing that, in order for the separation of church and state to have force and meaning, it must not be whittled away bit by bit as he saw happening with this decision. He found substantial social value in maintaining the wall of separation, because it prevents minority religions from being discriminated against by a religious majority.
I still subscribe to the belief that tax-raised funds cannot constitutionally be used to support religious schools, buy their school books, erect their buildings, pay their teachers, or pay any other of their maintenance expenses, even to the extent of one penny. The First Amendment's prohibition against governmental establishment of religion was written on the assumption that state aid to religion and religious schools generates discord, disharmony, hatred, and strife among our people, and that any government that supplies such aids is to that extent a tyranny. And I still believe that the only way to protect minority religious groups from majority groups in this country is to keep the wall of separation between church and state high and impregnable as the First and Fourteenth Amendments provide. The Court's affirmance here bodes nothing but evil to religious peace in this country.
Significance
This case reinforced the precedent of government money financing portions of religious, sectarian education by having those funds applied to activities other than direct religious education.
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