Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet

Petitioner
Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District
Respondent
Louis Grumet, et al.
Petitioner's Claim
That Chapter 748 of New York State Law, enabling creation of a separate school district to provide special education to the children of Kiryas Joel village, did not violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution mandating the separation of church and state.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Nathan Lewin
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Jay Worona
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter (writing for the Court), John Paul Stevens
Justices Dissenting
Antonin Scalia, William H. Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
27 June 1994
Decision
Denied the petitioner's claim and upheld the decisions of the New York statetrial court and New York court of appeals, which ruled that Chapter 748 of New York State Law impermissibly advanced religion.
Significance
The ruling provided further elaboration of the test for deciding violation ofthe Establishment Clause created in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). While neither affirming nor completely abandoning the Lemon test, the Court referredto Lemon throughout its decision. Despite this reference to Lemon, several justices deemed the Lemon test flawed, leaving the future methodof decision in Establishment Clause issues in doubt.
Kiryas Joel
Circumstances peculiar to the village of Kiryas Joel led to this case. In theearly twentieth century the Jews living in the vicinity of Satmar, a town near the border of Romania and Hungary, became a distinct religious community,the Satmar Hasidim, under the leadership of Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum. Following the Holocaust the Satmar Hasidim emigrated to the Williamsburg sectionof Brooklyn, New York. In the early 1970s the Satmars purchased an undeveloped area within the town of Monroe, New York, with the intent of creating a village made up exclusively of their followers. The Satmars achieved incorporation of their village, named Kiryas Joel, in 1977. The village of Kiryas Joel,with its homogeneous population sharing a single religious belief, maintaineda private school system offering an Orthodox Jewish curriculum, including segregation of the sexes and emphasis on Torah teachings and limited instruction in secular subjects. The village had no public school system prior to 1989,in that there were no non-Satmar students in the district. With no public school system, Kiryas Joel did not provide special education courses and services to children with disabilities. To meet this need the adjoining Monroe-Woodbury, New York public schools offered special education services to Kiryas Joel students in 1984.
Retrenchment and Renewed Controversy
Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions handed down on 1 July 1985, rendered the accommodation between the Monroe-Woodbury and Kiryas Joel schools unacceptable.In Grand Rapids School District v. Ball (1985), the Supreme Court ruled that the Grand Rapids public schools had violated the Constitution by providing remedial education and religious enrichment programs to nonpublic schools, whether during or after regular school hours. Then, in Aguilar v. Felton, (1985), the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that New York state statutes allowing provision of public school remedial education and counseling services to private school students were unconstitutional. In light of these rulings the arrangement reached by the Monroe-Woodbury schools and the Kiryas Joel schools was scrapped, and the search for a new arrangement began. Meanwhile, Satmar children with disabilities had to attend the Monroe-Woodbury schools, hiretheir own private tutors, or forego special education altogether. This situation was unacceptable to Satmar parents, who began to lobby for a political solution to their problem. Finally, in July of 1989, the New York State legislature adopted State Law Chapter 748, which constituted Kiryas Joel as a separate, public school district for the exclusive purpose of providing special education services to students with disabilities. Governor Mario Cuomo had somemisgivings about Chapter 748, given that the law specifically benefited members of one religious sect, but signed the law in the belief that it represented a satisfactory compromise for the peculiar situation faced by Kiryas Joel.Before the new Kiryas Joel school board commenced operations, however, the New York State School Boards Association brought suit against the State Education Department, alleging that Chapter 748 violated both the state and federalEstablishment Clauses barring formation of state-sponsored religious organizations.
Lower Court Rulings
The first ruling in Grumet v. New York State Education Department wasdelivered by the New York State trial court, which found that Chapter 748 failed all three tests for determining violation of the Establishment Clause aslaid out in the Supreme Court's decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman: it lacked at least one legitimate secular purpose; its primary effect was to advancea particular religious belief; and it resulted in excessive government entanglement in religion. As such, it was unconstitutional at both the state and federal levels. Subsequent legal actions at the state level resulted in rulings from the appellate division and the court of appeals upholding the trial court's findings. Following these rulings the Board of Education of Kiryas Joelappealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Challenging the Lemon Test
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on 30 March 1994, and many legal observers were eager to see if the Court would use the case as a platform for the confirmation, amendment, or overthrow of the three-pronged Lemon testfor determining violations of the Establishment Clause. However, when the Court's decision was handed down on 27 June 1994, the use of Lemon as a test was neither confirmed nor abandoned. The Court upheld the rulings of theNew York state trial and appeals courts by a 6-3 margin. Justice Souter, writing for the majority, maintained that this case more closely resembled Larkin v. Grendel's Den (1982) than Lemon. In Larkin, the Court struck down a Massachusetts state statute allowing religious bodies the ability to veto applications for liquor licenses by establishments planning to operate within 500 feet of any church, synagogue, or parochial school. Statingthat although the state had a legitimate interest in protecting religious organizations, allowing such organizations veto power over a state regulatory function created an unconstitutional "fusion of governmental and religious functions." Souter further elaborated the similarity between Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet and Larkin, pointing out that

the Establishment Clause problem presented by Chapter 748 is more subtle,but it resembles the issue raised in Larkin to the extent that the earlier case teaches that a State may not delegate its civic authority to a group chosen according to religious criterion.

Significantly, despite its reliance on Larkin, the Court also made reference to Lemon, in that by accommodating the needs of a particular religious sect, Chapter748 had the effect of advancing religion. Justice O'Connor, while concurringwith the majority, advanced the position that Chapter 748 was unconstitutional only in that it provided no assurance that the state would provide similarbenefits "equally to other religious (and nonreligious) groups."
Legal Impact
The Court's ruling in Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet failed to confirm or abandon the Lemon test of constitutionality under the Establishment Clause. Although it relied most heavily on Larkin in reachingits decision, the Court also did mention that Chapter 748 had a primary effect of advancing religion, in violation of one prong of the Lemon test. Perhapsthe most significant portion of the Court's decision was that contributed byJustice O'Connor, which was used as a basis for rewriting of New York StateLaw Chapter 748 by Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders so as to make the statute equally applicable to any municipality. As of 1999, the constitutionality of this new statute had yet to be determined.
Related Cases

• Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
  
• Larkin v. Grendel's Den, 459 U.S. 116 (1982).
  
• Grand Rapids School District v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373 (1985).
  
• Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S. 402 (1985).