The Supreme Court finished its term with the most important
ruling in many years on religion in the schools, upholding
the constitutionality of taxpayer- financed vouchers for
parochial school tuition. A program that is neutral and lets
parents choose between religious and nonreligious schools
will pass muster, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's
majority opinion made clear.
The 5-to-4 vote was the green light voucher proponents had
been hoping for. They now turn to a skeptical public and
private schools worried about constraints attached to public
money. Writing in the New York Times on Tuesday, Nobel
Economics prize winner Miltron Friedman called for the use of
vouchers that reflect the true cost of education in order to
introduce real competition into providing educational
services. He noted that private enterprise cannot compete on
price with religious school systems since the latter are
often subsidized in one way or another.
Agudas Yisroel of America, after having worked for years to
see this, is planning for the next stage.
Agudath Israel of America has been at the forefront of the
battle for meaningful school choice -- in the forms of
educational vouchers, tuition tax credits and several other
initiatives designed to relieve the crushing burden of
nonpublic school tuition -- for many decades.
Agudath Israel was one of the participants, along with other
Orthodox Jewish groups, in a "friend of the court" brief
submitted by the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public
Affairs to the U.S. Supreme Court in last week's landmark
case upholding the constitutionality of the controversial
Cleveland voucher program.
And now, according to Rabbi Shmuel Bloom, Agudath Israel's
executive vice president, the organization is poised for a
major national campaign to promote school choice at the
federal, state and local levels throughout the United
States.
The Cleveland program provides tuition aid to parents of
nearly 4,000 students who left failing public schools for
private ones. Lower courts had reached opposite conclusions
about whether the program is constitutional. The High Court,
in a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
ruled in the program's favor.
The majority opinion accepted the main argument of the Jewish
groups' brief, that as long as funds are neutrally provided
to parents and not directly to schools, "school choice"
programs, even when used by parents to help pay for religious
schooling, do not violate the First Amendment's separation of
church and state.
Commented Agudath Israel's executive vice president for
government and public affairs, Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, who
participated in the authorship of the brief:
"This decision begins a new era in American education. For
far too long, the debate over school vouchers has been
dominated by legalistic discussions of constitutional
concern. Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the Cleveland
program, society can at long last focus on the really
important public policy issue: improving education by
expanding parents' choice."
Agudath Israel will now be mobilizing community resources to
make precisely such a push.
Rabbi Bloom announced on erev Shabbos that a special
committee of Agudath Israel activists from across the United
States will be formed to design and carry out state-by-state
strategies to advance the agenda of meaningful school
choice.
However the long-awaited ruling on school vouchers may not be
the last word.
The battleground now is likely to move to the state level,
where many secular Jewish groups plan to mount an offensive
against vouchers, arguing that they are bad public policy
even if constitutional.
It does not appear that the decision, which came on the last
official day for the high court, will have substantial
implications for other church-state issues.
The majority opinion made a clear distinction between
vouchers and direct government funding of religious schools.
The decision thus is not likely to impact the issue of
charitable choice, which allows federal money to go directly
to religious groups that provide social services.
The court decision came a day after a U.S. appeals court
decided that the words "under G-d" in the Pledge of
Allegiance are unconstitutional. Americans across the
political and religious spectrum expressed outrage.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas
and Anthony Kennedy joined with Rehnquist's majority
decision.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, John Paul
Stevens and David Souter dissented.
Now, it appears that Pledge of Allegiance case, which leapt
to the forefront of public debate last week, could also find
its way to the Supreme Court.
The federal court ruled that the phrase "under G-d," which
the U.S. Congress added to the pledge of Allegiance in 1954,
amounted to an endorsement of religion.
In this case, Jewish groups were in rare agreement in
criticizing the courtīs decision, but for different
reasons.
