Meek v. Pittenger (1975)
Supreme Court Decisions on Religious Liberty
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Background Information
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted directly to all children enrolled in nonpublic elementary and secondary schools "auxiliary services" (Act 194) and loans of textbooks "acceptable for use in" the public schools (Act 195).
Act 195 also provided for loans directly to the nonpublic schools of "instructional materials and equipment, useful to the education" of nonpublic school children. The auxiliary services included counseling, testing, psychological services, speech and hearing therapy, and related services for exceptional, remedial, or educationally disadvantaged students; as well as "such other secular, neutral, non-ideological services as are of benefit to nonpublic school children" and are provided for those in public schools. The instructional materials included periodicals, photographs, maps, charts, recordings, and films. The instructional equipment included projectors, recorders, and laboratory paraphernalia.
Complaints were filed in court, alleging that each Act
...is a law respecting an establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment" because each Act "authorizes and directs payments to or use of books, materials and equipment in schools which (1) are controlled by churches or religious organizations, (2) have as their purpose the teaching, propagation and promotion of a particular religious faith, (3) conduct their operations, curriculums and programs to fulfill that purpose, (4) impose religious restrictions on admissions, (5) require attendance at instruction in theology and religious doctrine, (6) require attendance at or participation in religious worship, (7) are an integral part of the religious mission of the sponsoring church, (8) have as a substantial or dominant purpose the inculcation of religious values, (9) impose religious restrictions on faculty appointments, and (10) impose religious restrictions on what the faculty may teach.
Court Decision
The Supreme Court held that all but the textbook loans under Act 194 were unconstitutional violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The textbook loan was found to be constitutional because it "merely makes available to all children the benefits of a general program to lend school books free of charge." Not only was the purpose secular, but the aid itself was secular in nature.
The other aid, however, was not wholly secular because the materials and equipment could easily be used for religious purposes. This is, in part, because the institutions themselves are "pervasively sectarian":
The church-related elementary and secondary schools that are the primary beneficiaries of Act 195's instructional material and equipment loans typify such religion-pervasive institutions. The very purpose of many of those schools is to provide an integrated secular and religious education; the teaching process is, to a large extent, devoted to the inculcation of religious values and belief. Substantial aid to the educational function of such schools, accordingly, necessarily results in aid to the sectarian school enterprise as a whole.
In Earley v. DiCenso, a companion case to Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Court held that efforts by the government to ensure that ostensibly "secular" aid to religious schools remained secular and did not become religious would lead to "excessive entanglement" between the state and religious organizations - thus developing one of the three prongs of the Lemon Test.
Significance
This decision helped reinforce the standard that wholly secular aid to religious organizations may be permitted, but only so long as that aid could not be diverted to religious purposes, thus causing the government to indirectly aid and support religious education and/or religious agendas.
This standard was later dropped by the Court in favor the more lenient idea that aid to religious schools is permitted so long as no one religious group is singled out for special aid.
This case was effectively overturned in the Michtell v.Helms decision.
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