Court OKs U.S. Funding of ‘Teen Chastity’ Programs

In a victory for the Reagan Administration and religious conservatives, the Supreme Court today upheld a law providing for federal government payments to religious groups to counsel teen-agers to abstain from sex.

The high court’s 5-4 decision reinstated a key part of the so-called “teen chastity law,” a 1981 act designed to encourage teen-agers to avoid sex before marriage.

Under the Adolescent Family Life Act, the government has given more than $100 million to religious organizations, especially Roman Catholic charities, and other groups for counseling and other programs that discourage sexual activity by teen-agers. The religious groups have used the money to teach family-life and sex-education classes at churches and parochial schools.

The law, which bars funds for groups that provide abortions or abortion counseling or referral, encourages sexual self-discipline as a form of birth control.

“The act does not create an excessive entanglement of church and state,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said for the court majority.

“Although the act increased the role of religious organizations, the challenged provisions were also motivated by other, entirely legitimate secular concerns,” he said in rejecting arguments that the law advanced a religious view.

The Administration strongly defended the law even though it acknowledged the “constitutionally troublesome” ways some religious groups spent the money.

Opponents of the law challenged it in court as an unconstitutional effort to use federal money to subsidize religious indoctrination in order to stop premarital sex, abortion and birth control.

Justice Harry A. Blackmun said in dissent that the law was unconstitutional.

“The (law), without a doubt, endorses religion,” he said. “Federal tax dollars appropriated for the (law’s) purposes have been used, with government approval, to support religious teaching.”

Former Sen. Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.) sponsored the law and it was ushered through Congress by fellow conservatives.