WHAT DOES SANDY'S CONSTITUTION SAY?:

Church, State and Education (NY Times, 12/02/03)

The Supreme Court hears arguments today in an important church-state case, one that will decide how much leeway states have in declining to finance religion. Washington, whose State Constitution is emphatic on separating government from religion, does not let its college scholarship funds be used for theology degrees. A student who was training to become a Christian cleric has charged that his First Amendment rights were violated. His claim should be rejected.

Washington's State Constitution goes beyond the First Amendment's general language prohibiting the "establishment of religion" and expressly bars public money from being "appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction." To conform with this constitutional mandate, the state prohibited the use of funds for theology degrees when it established its Promise Scholarship program for low- and middle-income college students in 1999. [...]

Washington State is not depriving anyone of the free exercise of religion. It is merely drawing a line, which the Supreme Court has recognized, between religious and secular education, and directing its funds to secular education. There is no right to taxpayer financing for religious studies. To hold otherwise, the court would have to contradict its own abortion-financing cases, which say that a "legislature's decision not to subsidize the exercise of a fundamental right does not infringe the right."

Obviously school aid which a student can use for whatever course of study he chooses can in no wise be said to establish religion. But suppose the Justices were to uphold Washington's discriminatory system: you have a situation where a student who majors in English with a minor in Religion gets the aid, but if in his Junior year he switches to majoring in Religion he loses the aid and, having used the prior aid towards what is now a religion degree, could presumably be required to return the money. This evinces a hostility to religion that seems to fly in the face of all the Left's pretty words about government remaining neutral.

MORE:
Supreme Court Weighs Case on State Spending and Religion (LINDA GREENHOUSE, 12/02/03, NY Times)

Throughout the argument, both Justice O'Connor and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, another justice who seeks to accommodate religious interests, worried aloud that a ruling in Mr. Davey's favor would have the effect of compelling any state that offered tuition vouchers as part of a "school choice" program to include religious schools, regardless of whether the state wanted to create such an inclusive program.

"Can they refrain from making that program available for use in religious schools?" Justice O'Connor asked Mr. Davey's lawyer, Jay A. Sekulow.

"I would think not," replied Mr. Sekulow, the chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal organization founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson.

"So what you are urging here would have a major impact then, would it not, on voucher programs," Justice O'Connor said in a tone of alarm.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 2, 2003 6:38 PM