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Everson v. Board of Education

 
US Supreme Court: Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township
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330 U.S. 1 (1947), argued 20 Nov. 1946, decided 10 Feb. 1947 by vote of 5 to 4; black for the Court, Jackson, Frankfurter, Rutledge, and Burton in dissent. Everson involved a New Jersey statute that authorized boards of education to reimburse parents, including those whose children went to Catholic parochial schools, for the cost of bus transportation to and from school. To Arch Everson, a local resident and taxpayer, this practice violated the Establishment Clause.

At first reading it would seem that all the Court's members agreed with Everson. Justice Hugo Black, speaking for the Court, concluded that with the period of early settlers, the American people believed that individual religious liberty could be best achieved by a government that was stripped of all power to tax, to support, or otherwise to assist any or all religions. In 1785–1786 Thomas Jefferson and James Madison led a successful fight against a tax to support Virginia's established church. A major part of the fight was the latter's great “Memorial and Remonstrance.” In it, Madison argued that a true religion did not need the support of law; that no person, either believer or nonbeliever, should be taxed to support a religious institution of any kind; that the best interest of a society required that the minds of men always be wholly free; and that cruel persecutions were the inevitable result of government‐established religions. The “Memorial” led to the rejection of the tax measure and to the enactment of Jefferson's famous Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty.

At this point it would seem that Justice Black had made an incontrovertible case for a judgment of unconstitutionality. But for him, and four others, the net result was just the opposite. We must not, he said, strike down New Jersey's statute because it reaches the verge of its power or deprives its citizens of benefits because of their religion. The First Amendment requires the state to be neutral in its relation with groups of religious and nonbelievers, it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used to handicap than to favor religions. The state contributes no money to the parochial schools. It does not support them. Its legislation, as applied, does no more than provide a general program to help parents get their children, regardless of their religion, safely and expeditiously to and from accredited schools. New Jersey has not in the slightest breached a wall between church and state. Its statute is therefore constitutional.

While a minority of the Court—Justices Wiley Rutledge, Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson and Harold Burton—agreed with the basic premise expressed by Justice Black, they disagreed with the idea that it was not to be applied in Everson.

Everson remains good law. More important, however, the case held that the religion clauses of the First Amendment are made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, and it set out a standard by which the religion clauses were to be interpreted. The heart and soul of the Everson opinion, which has been and still is invoked in full or part is that neither the state nor federal government can set up a religion.

See also Education; Religion.

— Leo Pfeffer

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US Government Guide: Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township
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• 330 U.S. 1 (1947)
• Vote: 5–4
• For the Court: Black
• Dissenting: Jackson, Frankfurter, Rutledge, and Burton

In 1941 the New Jersey legislature passed a law that said boards of education could pay the costs of bus transportation, to and from school, of students in public schools and Catholic parochial schools. Arch Everson, a resident of the school district governed by the Ewing Township Board of Education, claimed that this state law violated the 1st Amendment prohibition against the state establishment of religion. Everson claimed that it was unfair and illegal for the state government to use money from taxpayers, like himself, to pay for costs associated with private religious schools.

The Issue

The 1st Amendment of the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Furthermore, the 14th Amendment says, “No state shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Everson argued that the 1st Amendment, which applies only to the U.S. Congress, could also be applied to state governments through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

The other constitutional issue was whether the New Jersey law challenged by Arch Everson actually involved the state government in religion in a way that violated the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.

Opinion of the Court

Justice Hugo Black, writing for the Supreme Court, argued that the 1st Amendment to the Constitution can be used to limit state governments through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. On this issue, the Court agreed with Arch Everson. However, the Court disagreed with Everson with regard to the establishment clause and upheld the New Jersey law, which provided bus transportation for Catholic parochial school students at public expense. Justice Black claimed that this New Jersey law did not violate the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment

Justice Black wrote the following rules to guide decisions about the establishment clause:

Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. … In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall of separation between Church and State.”


Justice Black concluded that the New Jersey statute at issue in this case did not violate the 1st Amendment because public payment for bus transportation of parochial school students had nothing to do with government promoting religion. Rather, this was only a program for moving children safely and easily to and from school, regardless of the religion or school of the children.

Dissent

Justice Robert Jackson wrote that he agreed totally with the Court's rules for deciding what is an “establishment of religion.” But he disagreed with the Court's conclusion that the Everson case did not fit these rules.

Justice Wiley Rutledge wrote a second dissenting opinion that also agreed with Black's rules and held that the New Jersey law was an example of an “establishment of religion.” He concluded, “The [1st] Amendment's purpose…was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion.”

Significance

The Everson case was the first to apply the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment to the states through the 14th Amendment. And it set standards to guide interpretation of the establishment clause that have been used to resolve later controversies, such as Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963).

See also Abington School District v. Schempp; Establishment clause; Engel v. Vitale; Religious issues under the Constitution

Sources

  • William Lee Miller, The First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic (New York: Paragon House, 1985)
Wikipedia: Everson v. Board of Education
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Everson v. Board of Education
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 20, 1946
Decided February 10, 1947
Full case name Arch R. Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing, et al.
Citations 330 U.S. 1 (more)
67 S. Ct. 504; 91 L. Ed. 711; 1947 U.S. LEXIS 2959; 168 A.L.R. 1392
Prior history Everson sued as a school district taxpayer, judgment for plaintiff, 132 N.J.L. 98, 39 A.2d 75; New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals reversed, 133 N. J.L. 350, 44 A.2d 333, cert. granted
Holding
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is incorporated against the states. However, the Supreme Court found that the New Jersey law was not in violation of the Establishment Clause.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Fred M. Vinson
Case opinions
Majority Black, joined by Vinson, Reed, Douglas, Murphy
Dissent Jackson, joined by Frankfurter
Dissent Rutledge, joined by Frankfurter, Jackson, Burton
Laws applied
U.S. Const., Amends. I and XIV

Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)[1] was the seminal United States Supreme Court case in Establishment Clause law in the United States. In addition to incorporating the Establishment Clause (applying it to the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment), Everson was the beginning of a powerful separationist drive by the Court, during which many programs and practices given government sanction were found to have religious purposes or effects and thus invalidated.

Contents

Background

A New Jersey law authorized payment by local school boards of the costs of transportation to and from schools - including private schools. Of the private schools that benefited from this policy, 96% were parochial Catholic schools. Arch R. Everson, a taxpayer in Ewing Township, filed a lawsuit alleging that this indirect aid to religion through the mechanism of reimbursing parents and students for costs incurred as a result of attending religious schools violated both the New Jersey State Constitution and the First Amendment. After a loss in the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, then the state's highest court, Everson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on purely federal constitutional grounds. Arguments were heard on November 20, 1946.

Decision

The 5-4 decision was handed down on February 10, 1947. The Court, through Justice Hugo Black, ruled that the state bill was constitutionally permissible. Perhaps as important as the actual outcome, though, was the position that the entire Court adopted on the Establishment Clause. It reflected a broad interpretation of the Clause that was to guide the Court's decisions for decades to come. Black's language was sweeping:

"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.'" 330 U.S. 1, 15-16.

Despite the bold rhetoric, the outcome rejected the claim of improper government aid to religion.

Minority opinion

Justice Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion in which he was joined by Justice Frankfurter. Justice Rutledge wrote another dissenting opinion in which he was joined by Justices Frankfurter, Jackson and Burton. The four dissenters agreed with Justice Black's definition of the Establishment Clause, but protested that the principles he laid down ought logically to lead to the invalidation of the challenged law.

Justice Rutledge argued that:

"The funds used here were raised by taxation. The Court does not dispute nor could it that their use does in fact give aid and encouragement to religious instruction. It only concludes that this aid is not 'support' in law. But Madison and Jefferson were concerned with aid and support in fact not as a legal conclusion 'entangled in precedents.' Here parents pay money to send their children to parochial schools and funds raised by taxation are used to reimburse them. This not only helps the children to get to school and the parents to send them. It aids them in a substantial way to get the very thing which they are sent to the particular school to secure, namely, religious training and teaching." 330 U.S. 1, 45.

Effects of the decision

Despite the contentious result reached in Everson, it remains one of the most important cases relating to church-state separation in Supreme Court case.

Controversy

Some, including former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, have criticized Everson for its reliance on quotations and views from Thomas Jefferson, who had little to do with the framing of the U.S. Constitution or its Bill of Rights -- it should be noted, however, that Jefferson not only drafted the Virginia Bill of Rights, the foundation of the U.S. Constitution, but also had extensive correspondence with James Madison during the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Everson's supporters counter that the case also draws heavily on the works of James Madison, the "Father of the Bill of Rights," particularly on his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.

It has been argued that Black interpreted the Establishment Clause to require a "separation of church and state" in order to limit public funds to parochial schools.[2] Supporters of this theory allege that the phrase itself has an anti-Catholic history,[3] and that legal reasoning in Everson was dubious.[4] Indeed, “[s]ome scholars argue that, even if the Everson court's use of the ‘wall of separation’ metaphor does reflect Jefferson's views, those views did not at all represent those of the individuals actually responsible for drafting and ratifying the First Amendment.”[5][6][7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Full text of the decision courtesy of Findlaw.com
  2. ^ PHILIP HAMBURGER, SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE (Harvard University Press 2002).
  3. ^ Hamburger, id.
  4. ^ HARVARD LAW SCHOOL FORUM, PUBLIC AID TO PAROCHIAL EDUCATION 10-11 (1951); GERALD T. DUNNE, HUGO BLACK AND THE JUDICIAL REVOLUTION 266 (Simon & Schuster 1977).
  5. ^ Patrick M. Garry, The Myth of Separation: America’s Historical Experience with Church and State, 33 Hofstra L. Rev. 475, 498 (2004) [1]
  6. ^ Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State 109, 162 (2002) (contending that at the time Jefferson expressed such views, they were not “widely published or even noticed”).
  7. ^ Michael A. Paulsen, Religion, Equality, and the Constitution: An Equal Protection Approach to Establishment Clause Adjudication, 61 Notre Dame L. Rev. 311, 317 (1986) (“The original intention behind the establishment clause...seems fairly clearly to have been to forbid establishment of a national religion and to prevent federal interference with a state's choice of whether or not to have an official state religion.”).

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