I don’t mean this as a rant (that’s why I didn’t put it in the Pit), but I’m genuinly confused…
Saying two words in the PoA violates our country’s most sacred document and tradition. But funneling millions of dollars to parochial schools does not?
If anything, I think the two rulings should be reversed. The Pledge is not a prayer. OTOH, the school voucher program is, IMHO, much more of a problem regarding the First Amendment.
As I understand it, the school voucher program simply allows students to go to religious schools with “public” money.
If parochial schools give equivalent or better education, what right does the state have to complain? Why should the taxpayers pay for this child to go to school, only to have his parents pay to go to a different school?
I don’t see how this has anything to do with seperation of church and state.
Well, I agree with you, but remember the difference…the PoA was found to be unconstitutional by the 9th circuit court of appeals, which tends to have really liberal judges and is more likely to make a ruling like that, while SCOTUS’s membership is more conservative, and less likely to rule that way.
In other words, if the Supremes had to decide on the Pledge, they’d prob. find it constitutional, and if the 9th circuit had to decide on vouchers, they’d prob. find it unconstitutional.
Because the money being pushed to parochial schools isn’t just being spent on books and science teachers. It’s being spent on things like the physical building (in many cases a church or church owned property), religious education teacher salaries, classroom time spent solely on religious matters, etc.
As a taxpayer, I prefer that my money not be spent on these things. I also prefer that my tax money not be spent on nuclear weapons, but I have (or at least thought I had) constitutional support to ensure that my money isn’t being spent on little Johnny learning the Koran/Bible/Torah/Book of Spells/etc.
Hey Zev, even though it’s two different courts, it doesn’t mean you didn’t raise a good debate topic.
The difference here is the difference between active and passive. With the PoA, the issue is that public agents (public teachers) are actively “establishing” religion - in their role as a public agent, they are leading students in affirming a belief in God.
With vouchers, the government is simply giving certain citizens money to spend on education. What type of education is the decision of the citizens, not the government.
To massively oversimplify (there are particular facts that strongly affect the analogy, but I’m shorthanding this now), it would not be considered an act by government aiding or establishing a religion, if the Social Security Administration gives someone their monthly check, and the recipient signs over the check to his/her church/synagogue/mosque.
Your money isn’t being spent specifically on Johnny learning religion. The government gives people money and lets them spend it however they choose.
The program is neutral as to whether the money is spent on a religious or secular school, so government is not aiding in the establishment of religion. And the Supreme Court has been consistent in its view that programs that provide benefits to a broad class without reference to religion are OK. The beneficiaries are poor kids. The parochial schools benefit incidentally from this, but it’s not a direct payment from government to churches.
While I’m not a big fan of the whole voucher idea, I don’t think it’s unconstitutional. I could for instance use the voucher to support a Montessori school which AFAIK does not advocate any religion.
Presumably the vouchers could also be used to send your kids to a Hare Krishna school or something like that. Although the use as such might actually raise the ire of people who are currently for vouchers.
In contrast the pledge of allegiance says “God” which includes a few popular monotheistic religions (albeit in a culturally biased way), but excludes polytheism, atheism, and non-patriarchal deities. If the pledge said something like “one nation under Visnu,” I think it would change a lot of peoples attitudes as far as constitutionality.
I would compare it to a witnesses right to affirm instead of referencing a deity.
It’s a chicken/egg situation. Without vouchers, it’s hard for secular schools to find funding, while religious schools are supported by churches. So the fact that the vast majority of private schools may be essentially the result of the government heavily subsidizing secular education through the public school system.
Give vouchers a few years to operate, and you might see more secular schools pop up.
Besides, I don’t see where the first amendment says that you can’t allow private, religious schools to be partially funded through vouchers. Perhaps someone can explain the logic to me.
My main objection to vouchers is that they are unlikely to help who they’re supposed to be helping.
My understanding is that vouchers are in the area of ~$2,000. Tuition to most private schools is more than that; the $2,000 isn’t going to help a parent who can’t come up with the additional money.
Hmm, I think I agree with Breyer’s dissent (I think it was his, anyway), that another very real danger here is the damage that it’ll do to the private religious schools! If you take that state money, you take it with strings attached. In the Cleveland case, the schools are not allowed to discriminate based on ethnicity or religion. I’m not sure how much reasonable accommodation the schools have to provide, but I’m kind of assuming that if they have to take you no matter what your religion is, they can’t expel you for refusing to participate in their religious rituals (could someone with more knowledge maybe fill us in on that?) It might defeat the whole purpose of having those religious schools if they get “infected” with secularism. And once you’ve started dipping your beak in the tax money, it’s oh so hard to quit.
Each student already gets a certain amount of tax money for his/her schooling. Vouchers allow them to choose which school they will attend with that money.
Why should they not be able to choose a religious school? Public education in many places is pretty bad, and if there is an alternative people should be able to choose it. To not allow them to choose a religious school would be to discriminate against religion, because they could still choose non-religious private schools.
In issues like this, I usually lean towards the side that gives the people greater freedom. Crazy thought, huh?
Using vouchers to pay for religious school seems equivalent to using food stamps to shop at a church-owned supermarket. If the cashier says “God bless you!” as she hands you a receipt with a Bible quote printed on the back, so what? The government is giving you money to buy food, and you can choose to spend it wherever you want, as long as the goal of putting food on your table is met.
Likewise, as long as the goal of educating kids to necessary requirements has been met, so what if the school is run by a church? The parents can choose to spend that education money at whichever school they want.
Of course, I’m presuming that voucher-funded schools are held to the same education requirements as public schools.
Ah, there’s the rub. Sure, arithmetic and spelling may be pretty value-neutral. But what about the science curriculum? What are your standards for biology and geology and astronomy going to be? What about literature–can a voucher school refuse to teach Shakespeare because his plays contain all those nasty references to witches and what-not? What about history? Will the history requirements be met if a school teaches that America was founded as a nation divinely pre-ordained to be the new Chosen People of God, destined to usher in a new era of Christian Dominion over the whole planet? And what about the White Supremacist voucher school; the radical Afrocentrist voucher school (the Greeks and Romans stole everything worthy in their civilizations from Black Egyptians who built the Pyramids using lost secrets of psychic science); the Wiccan voucher school; the Scientologist voucher school…