Grand Rapids School District v. Ball

Petitioner
Grand Rapids School District, Michigan
Respondent
Six Grand Rapids, Michigan, taxpayers
Petitioner's Claim
That two local public-school programs, Shared Time and Community Education, violated the separation of church and state called for in the First Amendmentby using public funds to support courses offered in religious schools.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Kenneth F. Ripple, Special Assistant Attorney General of Michigan
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
A. E. Dick Howard
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr. (writing for the Court), Warren E.Burger, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens
Justices Dissenting
William H. Rehnquist, Byron R. White
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
1 July 1985
Decision
That the Grand Rapids programs did indeed violate the First Amendment.
Significance
The Court's decision created a major barrier against using public funds for programs that take place within religious schools, making it more difficult toestablish such programs and also damaging President Ronald Reagan's effortsto create a voucher system whereby parents could get tax credit or other public assistance for sending their children to private schools.
When the Bill of Rights was first added to the Constitution, Americans lookedto European law to decide what they did and did not want their new country to be like. One of the aspects of European countries that most displeased theframers of the Constitution was the idea of an official church, one that wassanctioned, financially supported, or otherwise given special privileges by the government. In England, for example, the Church of England was the official church, and it was headed by the King of England. The colonists decided toinsure that in America, church and state would be completely separate.
As a result, the First Amendment to the new Constitution held that "Congressshall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In other words, Congress could not establish any religion as officially supported by the government. Nor could Congress interfere with the practice of any religion.
Separating Public and Religious Education
Over the years, the Supreme Court ruled on many different cases that involvedthe separation of church and state, particularly when it came to public education. For example, it allowed a public school system to loan secular (nonreligious) textbooks to religious school students. It also allowed public schools to provide medical diagnostic services to students in religious schools. Onthe other hand, it would not allow the public to fund salary supplements forreligious school teachers, or to reimburse religious schools for tests theyprepared.
Meanwhile, Congress was passing legislation that also affected the relationship between public and religious education. By 1985, the year of Grand Rapids School District v. Ball, Congress had mandated that public schools hadto provide all students with certain forms of remedial services. This meantthat somehow, public school districts had to reach out to private-school students, including parochial-school students, to insure that they got certain kinds of help and instruction. In Grand Rapids, the school district came up with two programs to fulfill this requirement: Shared Time and Community Education.
Shared Time funded courses during the regular school day that were supposed to supplement the "core curriculum" courses that every school, public or private, had to offer in order to be accredited by the state of Michigan. These supplementary courses were offered right in the private-school building duringthe regular school day. They included remedial and enrichment math, remedialand enrichment reading, art, music, and physical education. Typically, a nonpublic school student would attend these publicly funded classes for one or two periods a week, or about ten percent of his or her school time during the year. Although they taught in private schools, the Shared Time teachers were full-time public-school employees.
Community Education was a program offered throughout Grand Rapids, both in schools and at other sites--but only after the school day was done. Both children and adults could take Community Education classes, which included arts andcrafts, home economics, Spanish, gymnastics, yearbook production, Christmasarts and crafts, drama, newspaper, humanities, chess, model building, and nature appreciation. Teachers of Community Education were part-time public school employees--that is, they were paid by the public school district only for teaching, say, one or two courses a week. If a Community Education course wastaught within a private-school building, it was virtually certain that the teacher was also employed full-time during the day by that private school.
Although Shared Time and Community Education were not specifically directed to religious schools, the district court found that, in fact, most of the schools who used them were "religiously oriented" and their regular instruction was "pervasively sectarian." In other words, during these religious schools' regular school day, even when a class was about history, literature, or science, religious ideas would be brought into the discussion. However, there was no evidence that any religious instruction was offered as part of either of the publicly funded programs.
Taking the Lemon Test
Local taxpayers decided to challenge the constitutionality of spending publicfunds on programs that were offered within religious schools. Both the district court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the programs violated the First Amendment. Grand Rapids School District decided to take the case to the Supreme Court.
After what was apparently a bitter debate, the Court ruled 5-4 that the Community Education program violated the First Amendment, and 7-2 that the SharedTime program was in violation. Justice Brennan wrote the majority opinion, which laid out a sweeping prohibition against programs like the ones in Grand Rapids.
Brennan explained that he had been guided by a three-part test laid out in anearlier decision, Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). The so-called "Lemon test" used three criterion to evaluate each case: 1) whether the law providing public funds to religious schools had a secular (nonreligious) purpose in mind;2) whether the law either advanced or inhibited religion; and 3) whether thelaw lead to "an excessive government entanglement with religion."
Brennan believed that Grand Rapids had passed the first part of the Lemon test. Clearly, the purpose of the law funding Shared Time and Community Education had been to help some students supplement their education. No religious purpose was intended. The question was with the second part of the Lemon test, and whether a religious purpose had been achieved, even if the school districthad not intended it.
Yes, answered Justice Brennan:

We do not question that the religious school teachers employed by the Community Education program will attempt in good faith to perform their secular mission conscientiously. Nonetheless, there is a substantial risk that the religious message they are expected to convey during the regular school day will infuse the supposedly secular classes. . . Shared Time instructors are teaching academic subjects in religious schools in courses virtually indistinguishable from the other courses offered during the regular religious day. Teachers in such an atmosphere may well subtly (or overtly) conform their instruction to the environment in which they teach, while students will perceive the instruction in the context of the dominantly religious message of the institution.

The End of A Symbolic Union
Justice Brennan also believed that the Grand Rapids programs failed the thirdpart of the Lemon test: "excessive government entanglement with religion." He wrote that even the "state-paid instructors" might be "influenced" by the religious atmosphere of the schools in which they worked, so that they might "subtly or overtly indoctrinate the students in particular religious tenets atpublic expense." Brennan said that for public schools to provide services ina religious school building was to create a "symbolic union of church and state."
Brennan had more concerns about where the process of private schools taking money from the public systems would stop. He worried that religious schools would stop teaching all their secular courses expecting the public schools to pick up their tabs. Then the public would truly be subsidizing religious education.
Of course, this arrangement was exactly what President Ronald Reagan, Secretary of Education William Bennett, and others in the Reagan administration hadbeen calling for. They had proposed a system whereby public schools would bereplaced with vouchers or tax credits, so that all who paid taxes would be allowed to direct their share into any type of education they chose. That way,rather than sending a child to a free public school, a parent might use his or her tax credit or voucher to pay all or part of the tuition at a private orreligious school.
By ruling as they did in Grand Rapids School District v. Ball, the Supreme Court would seem to be calling such a system unconstitutional. The day after the decision, Bennett assailed the decision, calling it a "ridiculous" expression of the Court's "fastidious disdain for religion that is hard to fathom." "Crazy," "terrible," and "badly reasoned," were just some of the wordsBennett used to criticize the Court's ruling.
Related Cases

• Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
  
• Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S. 402 (1985).
  
• Agostini v. Felton, 117 S.Ct. 1997 (1997).