Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (1993)
Supreme Court Decisions on Religious Liberty
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Background Information
The parents of James Zobrest, a deaf child attending a parochial school, sued their local public school district because it failed to provide a sign language interpreter for their son in his Catholic school as they had when he attended a public middle school.
The parents aruged that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the First Amendment's free exercise clause obliged the school to provide this service regardless of what school their son attended.
Court Decision
In 1993, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 that the school district was required to offer the Zobrest family the sign language interpreter they wanted.
The primary result of the ruling in Zobrest was that the government is not permitted to place a ban on all public employees in sectarian schools. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Rehnquist argued that programs which neutrally offer assistance to a class of citizens are not unconstitutional simply because the beneficiary is one instance happens to be religious - otherwise, that would constitute anti-religious discrimination.
In this case, the parochial school was not relieved of any financial burden that it otherwise would have to bear (as it would be in the case of purchasing textbooks or other supplies for religious schools so that they would not have to buy them). The sign language interpreter who actually received the public funding did not add to or take away from the religious environment in which James Zobrest's education took place; therefore, funding the interpreter was religiously neutral.
So the Court concluded:
When the government offers a neutral service on the premises of a sectarian school as part of a general program that "is in no way skewed toward religion," it follows under our prior decisions that provision of that service does not offend the Establishment Clause.
Significance
This Court's decision allowed the government to pay public employees to work in parochial schools so long as their presence had no impact upon the religious environemnt itself. The job performed by the interpreter was not religious even though the person would be translating religiously based information. The Supreme Court also found that this assistance did not relieve the religious school of a burden that it otherwise would have borne independently.
This Court Decision was instrumental in Sandra Day O'Connor's ruling in the Agnostini v. Felton, in which the Court allowed public school teachers to tutor private school students in their private schools, even if the schools were primarily religious in nature.
On a personal note, I'd like to add that I find it odd that parents who choose to reject the services of a public school should want to take with them some of those services. If a school is incapable of providing a proper education for their child, why would they choose to pay extra money to send their child there?
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