Court Bars Public Teachers From Church Schoolrooms

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court, upholding strict constitutional limits on taxpayer aid to parochial education, ruled Monday that public school teachers may not conduct special classes in religiously affiliated schools.

In two 5-4 decisions, the court struck down a program using federal funds to provide compensatory education for disadvantaged children in church schools in New York City and a program using state and local funds to provide remedial and enrichment courses for students in religious schools in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“Even such a praiseworthy, secular purpose cannot validate government aid to parochial schools when the aid has the effect of promoting a single religion or religion generally or when the aid unduly entangles government in matters religious,” Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote for the court.

The rulings were the third time this term that the court has drawn a firm line between church and state, rejecting pleas by the Reagan Administration to allow greater government accommodation of religion. Earlier, the court invalidated an Alabama law that set aside a moment of silence in public school classrooms for voluntary prayer and a Connecticut law that gave employees the unqualified right to refuse to work on the Sabbath.

In all three instances, the court reasserted a test adopted in 1971 to delineate the difficult line between church and state. To be permissible, a law must have a secular or non-religious purpose, it must neither advance nor inhibit religion and it must not excessively entangle government with religion.

Although Monday’s Supreme Court decisions strongly rejected direct public aid to religious schools, they left the way clear for forms of “indirect” parochial aid--ostensibly aimed at students rather than religious institutions--such as textbook loans and bus fare reimbursement. It appeared also that publicly funded remedial programs might still be permissible for parochial students in off-premises, non-religious facilities.

The rulings were praised by representatives of the nation’s largest teachers’ organizations, who said they underscored the court’s commitment to drawing a clear line between church and state.

But Education Secretary William J. Bennett called the decisions “terrible” and said that they reflected “a hostility toward religion.”

Hurting Neediest Students

And spokesmen for both public and private schools warned that the rulings would harm programs geared to the neediest of students. The decisions, which could affect the instruction of 183,000 poor parochial school students around the country, will work new hardships on already cash-short public school districts in many big cities, the school officials said.

The four Supreme Court justices in the minority in Monday’s rulings issued sharp dissents. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, in his dissent in the New York case, said that the decision would deny countless private school children “desperately needed” remedial assistance in reading, mathematics and English.

“Rather than showing the neutrality the court boasts of, it exhibits nothing less than hostility toward religion and children who attend church-sponsored schools,” Burger wrote.

Justices Byron R. White, William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor also dissented in both cases.

The Grand Rapids program provided reading, mathematics, art, music and other instruction to about 11,000 private-school students using classrooms leased by the school district from 41 private schools, 40 of them church-affiliated. The school district, in a $6-million-a-year program, provided the teachers, materials and equipment for the program.

Religious Symbols Removed

Public school teachers taught at the private schools during the regular school day, but religious symbols were removed and signs reading “public school” were posted. In addition, private school instructors at the same schools received public funds for teaching non-religious classes for children and adults in the evening.

A federal judge struck down the program in 1983 and a federal appeals court in Cincinnati agreed, saying that, if the Grand Rapids program were upheld, “the separation of church and state will be effectively ended in the field of public education.”

The justices affirmed the appellate court ruling (Grand Rapids vs. Ball, 83-990).

The church school teachers, paid with taxpayer dollars, might “intentionally or inadvertently” advocate a religious belief, Brennan wrote. He added that such a program might provide a “crucial symbolic link” between government and religion and imply government support of religion in the eyes of impressionable students. Finally, he said, the program might promote religion by impermissibly providing a financial subsidy to religious institutions.

The court rejected the district’s contention that the program primarily aided students, not schools, and therefore was permissible under previous decisions by the justices. The aid provided in this case--not only instructional materials but instructional services by teachers--provides “direct and substantial” government assistance to religion, Brennan said.

Program Began in 1966

The New York program began in 1966 under provisions of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is aimed at providing remedial education for deprived children in low-income areas. Currently, the federal government spends about $3 billion annually on programs for 5 million students, most of them in public schools.

New York school authorities had used federal funds to pay public school teachers to give remedial instruction in private schools, most religiously affiliated. But last year a federal appeals court struck down such aid as violating the Constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed (Aguilar vs. Felton, 84-237). Although the justices acknowledged that the city attempted to supervise the program closely, monitoring instructors to make sure there was no promotion of religion, they said that that feature made it no more permissible than the Grand Rapids program. Even if supervision were successful, they said, the New York program would be unconstitutional because it would inevitably result in “excessive entanglement” of church and state.

“Even where state aid to parochial institutions does not have the primary effect of advancing religion, the provision of such aid may nonetheless violate the Establishment Clause owing to the nature of the interaction of church and state in the administration of that aid,” Brennan wrote.

In dissent, Rehnquist said the court had created a “Catch 22” in which “aid must be supervised to ensure no entanglement but the supervision itself is held to cause an entanglement.”