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Case Summary for Agostini v. Felton |
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| Date Decided: | June 23, 1997 | | Issue: | Freedom of Religion -- Whether the Court should overrule its decision in Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S. 402 (1985), in which it held that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits public school employees from providing remedial education to students at parochial schools. | | Vote: | Yes, 5-4 | | Facts: | Under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, 20 U.S.C. §§6301 et seq., all educationally and economically disadvantaged children are entitled to publicly funded remedial education services, regardless of whether they attend public or private schools. Prior to the Court's decision in Aguilar, many school systems provided these services to children attending religious schools by having public school teachers conduct remedial education training at the private schools. In Aguilar, the Court held that these practices violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because they excessively "entangled" the public and religious school systems and therefore violated the requirement that church and state remain separate. As a result of Aguilar, the remedial education services now generally are provided off-site. Some students are bussed from their religious schools to public schools or to leased sites. Others receive their remedial education training in vans parked outside of their religious schools. For these and other reasons, the decision in Aguilar has been widely criticized, even by members of the Court. In late 1995, affected parents and the New York City Board of Education filed motions in the district court asking that the court recognize that Aguilar was no longer good law. The district court agreed to reconsider the case but ultimately issued rulings consistent with Aguilar. On appeal, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. | | Legal Principles at Issue: | Although rarely used, Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure permits parties to seek relief from an earlier court order that is no longer supported by law. Whether Aguilar was no longer good law depended upon how the Court applied the three-pronged test it has used to determine whether a government program violates the Establishment Clause. A program will be upheld if it (1) has a secular purpose, (2) has a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion, and (3) does not excessively entangle government with religion. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). Since Aguilar, the Court has reached somewhat inconsistent results in cases involving the provision of services to students attending religious schools. In School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373 (1985), as in Aguilar, the Court held that a remedial education program violated the Establishment Clause. In Witters v. Washington Dept. of Servs. for Blind, 474 U.S. 481 (1986), however, the Court upheld a program that permitted a student to use a state vocational tuition voucher to attend a Christian college. Then, in Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist., 509 U.S. 1 (1993), the Court held that a state-employed sign language interpreter could be used by a student in a religious high school. | | Legal Basis for Decision: | The Court first found that Rule 60(b) allowed the parties to bring this action to challenge the decision in Aguilar. The Court then, in light of the holdings in Witters and Zobrest, ruled that the decision in Aguilar was no longer good law. The Court expressly rejected three presumptions that it previously had relied on to support a number of its rulings: (1) that permitting public employees to work within religious schools inevitably results in the state-sponsored indoctrination of religion; (2) that permitting public employees to work within religious schools necessarily constitutes a symbolic union between church and state; and (3) that any government aid that enhances the educational function of religious schools impermissibly violates the separation between church and state. | | This Case is Important Because: | The Court, by rejecting these presumptions, altered its approach to Establishment Clause cases. The Court's approach now appears to focus on the actual, rather than potential, effect of government programs. If programs actually result in state-sponsored religious indoctrination, they apparently still will violate the First Amendment. Programs that create only the possibility of such indoctrination, however, apparently will not. The Court did not replace the rejected presumptions with any new bright-line rules, which means that the full effect of this new Establishment Clause jurisprudence will not be known for some time. | | Quotable: | "[A] federally funded program providing supplemental, remedial instruction to disadvantaged children on a neutral basis is not invalid under the Establishment Clause when such instruction is given on the premises of sectarian schools by government employees pursuant to a program containing safeguards such as those present here." | | Writing for the Majority: | Justice O'Connor | | Voting with the Majority: | Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas | | Writing for the Dissent: | Justices Souter and Ginsburg filed separate dissents. | | Voting with the Dissent: | Justices Stevens and Ginsburg joined Justice Souter's dissent, and Justice Breyer joined that dissent in part. Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer joined Justice Ginsburg's dissent. | | Not Voting: | N/A | |
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