Religion

In June 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back restrictions that it had imposed twelve years earlier on federal aid to religious schools. In a 5–4 decision in Agostini v. Felton, 117 S. Ct. 1997 (1997), the Court ruled that public school teachers can teach remedial education classes to disadvantaged students on the premises of parochial schools—a dramatic reversal of the Court's earlier hard line.

Federal law provides funds for such services to all children of low-income families under title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C.A. § 6301 et seq.). But in 1985 the Court barred public school instructors from teaching title I classes on parochial school premises. In Aguilar v. Felton (473 U.S. 402, 105 S. Ct. 3232, 87 L. Ed. 2d 290), the majority ruled that the mere presence of public employees at these schools had the effect of unconstitutionally advancing religion. To comply with the order, New York parked vans outside of parochial school property to deliver the services, a system that cost taxpayers $100 million between 1985 and 1997.

In a 1995 challenge, New York City argued that intervening cases had invalidated the Supreme Court's earlier ruling. Upon accepting the case on appeal in 1997, the Court agreed. In her majority opinion, Justice SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR held that Aguilar had been overruled by two more recent cases based on the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind, 474 U.S. 481, 106 S. Ct. 748, 88 L. Ed. 2d 846 (1986), and Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District, 509 U.S. 1, 113 S. Ct. 2462, 125 L. Ed. 2d (1993). O'Connor said that the two cases—permitting a state tuition grant to a blind person who attended a Christian college, and allowing a state-employed sign language interpreter to accompany a deaf student to a Catholic school, respectively—made it clear that the premises in Aguilarwere no longer valid.

Although limited specifically to title I programs, the decision added fuel to another long-standing controversy. Proponents and opponents of school vouchers—a system under which parents would be able to allocate their tax dollars to their children's private school education—disputed whether the case indicated that the Court was moving toward embracing the voucher idea.