Grand Rapids School District v. Ball (1985)

Supreme Court Decisions on Religious Liberty

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Background Information

Grand Rapids School District offered two programs conducted in leased private school classrooms. One (Shared Time) was taught during the regular school day by public school teachers to supplement a core cirriculum. The other (Community Education) was taught after regular school hours by part-time "public" teachers otherwise employed as full-time teachers by a sectarian religious school.

Both types of classes were taught by teachers employed by and paid by the government. Becauseof this, a group of taxpayers sued claiming that this program violated the Establishment Clause because public funds and public employees were being used to indirectly support religious institutions.

Court Decision

Both programs, according to the Supreme Court, had the effect of promoting religion in three distinct ways:

• the teachers might be influenced by the "pervasively sectarian nature" of the eligious-school environment and might "subtly or overtly indoctrinate the students in particular religious tenets at public expense";
• use of the parochial school classrooms "threatens to convey a message of state support for religion" through "the symbolic union of government and religion in one sectarian enterprise";
• and "the programs in effect subsidize the religious functions of the parochial schools by taking over a substantial portion of their responsibility for teaching secular subjects."

Significance

This decision is one of many that expresses Court's disfavor with public employees teaching in or otherwise supporting the mission of nonpublic schools. Because young students are so impressionable, there is a real risk that the government will unintentionally express support for a school's religious mission and add to the children's religious indoctrination.

It was here for the first time that the Court brought together Justice O'Connor's writings on the "endorsement test" (Lynch v. Donelly) and the "reasonable observer test" (Wallace v. Jaffee):

It follows that an important concern of the effects test is whether the symbolic union of church and state effected by the challenged governmental action is sufficiently likely to be perceived by adherents of the controlling denominations as an endorsement, and by the nonadherents as a disapproval, of their individual religious choices.

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