Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1947

Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing

330 U.S. 1 | 67 S. Ct. 504 | 91 L. Ed. 711 | 1947 U.S. LEXIS 2959

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Takeaway

In short, Everson incorporated the Establishment Clause against the states and announced a strong separationist principle, yet upheld neutral public transportation benefits that reached parochial-school students indirectly through their parents.

Background

A New Jersey statute authorized local school districts to provide transportation for children traveling to and from school, including children attending nonpublic schools that were not operated for profit. Ewing Township reimbursed parents for bus fares paid to transport their children on regular public buses to public schools and Catholic parochial schools.

A township taxpayer challenged the reimbursements for parochial-school students. He argued that the payments used tax funds for private purposes in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause and, more fundamentally, that they supported religious schools in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, as incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

The New Jersey Supreme Court initially invalidated the program under the state constitution. The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals reversed, concluding that the statute and reimbursement resolution did not violate either the state or federal Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed. The Court did not decide whether the statute's exclusion of for-profit private schools was valid because that exclusion had not been properly challenged.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether reimbursing parents for the bus fares of children attending parochial schools deprives taxpayers of property without due process because the expenditure serves a private rather than public purpose.

Holding

No. New Jersey could reasonably treat transportation assistance for schoolchildren as serving a public purpose.

Reasoning

The Court gave substantial deference to the New Jersey Legislature's conclusion that helping children travel safely to school advances the public welfare. A law does not lose its public character simply because it also benefits particular parents and children or reimburses them for expenses they have paid.

Education and measures that facilitate access to education plainly serve public purposes. Reimbursing bus fares may help children avoid the traffic and other dangers associated with walking or finding their own transportation to school.

The Court treated the claim that transportation to religious schools improperly supports religion as an Establishment Clause question, rather than as an independent due-process objection. Thus, the constitutional validity of this use of tax funds turned on the First Amendment analysis.

Issue #2

Whether a state violates the Establishment Clause by reimbursing parents for bus fares used to transport children to Catholic parochial schools under a general school-transportation program.

Holding

No. A neutral program reimbursing transportation costs for children attending public and accredited nonpublic schools does not establish religion merely because parochial-school students receive the benefit.

Reasoning

The Establishment Clause applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Black described its historical purpose in broad terms: government may not establish a church, favor one religion over another, tax citizens to support religious activities or institutions, or participate in religious affairs. In Jefferson's phrase, the Clause creates a "wall of separation between church and State."

That separation does not require government to treat religious people and institutions as adversaries. The state may not fund religious instruction or the religious schools themselves, but it also may not deny otherwise general public-welfare benefits to people solely because they choose to exercise their religion.

The reimbursement program was directed to parents and children, not to the parochial schools. New Jersey paid no money to the schools and did not finance their religious teaching. Instead, it helped children travel to accredited schools through a generally available transportation program, without regard to the religious beliefs of the children or their parents.

The Court compared bus-fare reimbursement to general governmental services such as police protection, fire protection, streets, and sewer connections. Such neutral services can incidentally make it easier for religious schools to operate, but that incidental benefit does not itself amount to governmental establishment or support of religion.

Because the program provided a general safety and transportation benefit to schoolchildren rather than subsidizing religious instruction, the Court concluded that New Jersey had not breached the constitutional wall separating church and state.

Dissents

Justice Jackson

Reasoning

Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Frankfurter, argued that the Court's characterization of the program as a general transportation and safety service did not match the record. Ewing Township neither operated buses nor supplied transportation; it merely reimbursed parents after children had already ridden ordinary public buses. Reimbursement therefore did not make the children's travel safer or more expeditious.

He also rejected the majority's premise that the benefit was broadly available without regard to religion. As applied, the township resolution reimbursed families whose children attended public schools or Catholic schools, while excluding other private schools. In his view, the Court should decide the case on that actual classification rather than hypothesize a broader, neutral program.

For Jackson, Catholic parochial schools were not merely secular schools with some religious instruction. Their religious mission and church supervision made them integral to the Church's work. Public reimbursement of the cost of getting children to those schools therefore aided religious education and, in practical effect, aided the Church itself.

The police-and-fire-protection analogy failed because police and firefighters protect persons and property without asking about religious affiliation. Under this reimbursement plan, by contrast, officials had to identify the character of the school and granted aid because a child attended a Catholic school. Jackson concluded that the Constitution forbids making religious instruction a publicly financed undertaking, even indirectly.

Justice Rutledge

Reasoning

Justice Rutledge, joined by Justices Frankfurter, Jackson, and Burton, read the Establishment Clause as barring every form and degree of public financial support for religion. He emphasized that the Clause forbids not only the formal establishment of a single church, but also laws respecting an establishment of religion more generally.

He grounded that conclusion in the Virginia struggle led by Jefferson and Madison against compulsory religious assessments. In particular, Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance opposed even a small tax contribution for religious support because accepting the principle would open the way to greater compelled support and religious conflict.

In Rutledge's view, transportation was an essential component of education, no less than books, buildings, teachers, or equipment. Paying a child's transportation costs to reach a school that combines secular instruction with daily religious training necessarily aided the school's religious mission. The fact that payments passed through parents rather than directly to the school did not change their practical effect.

He rejected the majority's distinction between neutral public services and transportation reimbursement. Police and fire protection are ordinary protections available as a matter of common right; this program, however, earmarked tax-raised funds to defray an expense of attending religious schools. It could not be justified simply by calling religious education a public-welfare function.

Rutledge also warned that the decision was not a minor dispute over bus fares. If the state could pay transportation costs because religious schools advance education generally, he saw no principled constitutional line preventing it from paying tuition, teachers' salaries, or other costs of religious schooling. For him, the constitutional commitment to religious liberty required complete financial separation between government and religious education.