Agostini v. Felton

Agostini v. Felton, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 23, 1997, held (5–4) that the New York City Board of Education’s practice of employing teachers to provide on-site remedial instruction to educationally deprived students in parochial schools did not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which generally prohibits the government from establishing, advancing, or giving favour to any religion. The case was unusual in that it presented no new facts but consisted entirely of a review of the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Aguilar v. Felton (1985), which had reached exactly the opposite conclusion.

Background

Aguilar v. Felton arose in 1978 when a group of taxpayers challenged the New York City Board of Education’s use of federal funds under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to pay the salaries of teachers in its remedial-education program. Title I authorizes financial assistance to local school systems to help meet the needs of educationally deprived and low-income students. The law expressly provides that students do not have to attend public schools in order to receive educational services. After the U.S. district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the decision. The Supreme Court then affirmed the Second Circuit’s ruling, agreeing that aspects of New York’s remedial-education program—including the need for “pervasive monitoring by public authorities” to ensure that remedial-education teachers did not intentionally or unintentionally inculcate religion—constituted “excessive entanglement” between government and religion. In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Supreme Court had incorporated that excessive-entanglement standard into a test for establishment-clause violation, which was later known as the Lemon test.

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Some 10 years later, the school board, along with a group of parents of parochial-school students who were eligible for remedial instruction under Title I, asked the same district court to lift the injunction it had imposed in Aguilar. The basis of their motion was Rule 60(b)(5) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allows a federal court to grant relief from a final judgment if, among other reasons, “applying it prospectively is no longer equitable.” The challengers argued that the Supreme Court’s establishment-clause jurisprudence during the preceding decade was inconsistent with Aguilar, which was therefore no longer good law. The cases in question were Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind (1986), in which the court ruled that the establishment clause did not preclude the state of Washington from extending financial assistance to a blind person who chose to study at a Christian college to become a pastor, missionary, or youth director; Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (1993), in which the court held that a public school board’s provision of an on-site sign-language interpreter to a student in a religious school did not constitute a violation of the establishment clause; and Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of University of Virginia (1995), in which the court required the University of Virginia to fund the printing of a student publication that discussed contemporary events from a Christian perspective.

Acknowledging those precedents, the district court allowed that there “may be good reason to conclude that Aguilar’s demise is imminent.” Nevertheless, it denied the motion on the grounds that Aguilar’s demise had “not yet occurred.” After the Second Circuit affirmed the judgment, the challengers appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on April 15, 1997.

Majority opinion

In an opinion for a 5–4 majority written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Supreme Court reversed the Second Circuit’s ruling and overturned Aguilar, thus making that decision’s demise official. While acknowledging that the Lemon test continued to define permissible government conduct under the establishment clause, the court asserted that the three post-Aguilar decisions had changed its “understanding of the criteria used to assess whether aid to religion has an impermissible effect.” In particular, the court no longer assumed, as it did in Aguilar and in School District of Grand Rapids v. Ball (1985), that “any public employee who works on the premises of a religious school” will “inculcate religion in her work,” that “the presence of public employees on private school premises creates a symbolic union between church and state,” and that “any and all public aid that directly aids the educational function of religious schools impermissibly finances religious indoctrination.” Thus, no objection to New York’s remedial-education program could be advanced on those grounds. Regarding Aguilar’s central claim that the program involved an excessive entanglement of government and religion, the court argued that this finding relied on the invalid assumption that public employees working in religious schools will inculcate religion and on other grounds that were insufficient to demonstrate excessive entanglement, given the court’s evolved understanding of the establishment clause.

O’Connor’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice Willliam Rehnquist and by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Justice David Souter filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens and joined in part by Justice Stephen Breyer. Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion was joined by Breyer, Souter, and Stevens.