Court OKs Tax Money Use in Church School

In a victory for religious rights, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that tax money may be used to pay for a deaf child’s interpreter in a Roman Catholic school.

The justices, in ruling for the parents of an Arizona boy, stressed that a “neutral government program” that gives money to parents or children does not violate the Constitution simply because the aid may benefit a parochial school or subsidize religious instruction.

“Any attenuated financial benefit that parochial schools do ultimately receive is attributable to the private choices of individual parents,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said.

The ruling appears to clear up constitutional doubts about state-funded “vouchers” for students who attend parochial schools, an issue that will be before California voters in a November referendum.

In other rulings Friday, the justices ordered 16 states, not including California, to refund taxes that were wrongly collected from federal retirees. They also ruled that a Nevada prison inmate may have been subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” because he was locked up with a cellmate who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day.

But the court left in legal limbo as many as 300,000 illegal immigrants who were seeking amnesty under a program that expired in 1988. The justices sent that issue back to a trial judge to consider whether these immigrants were blocked from seeking amnesty between 1986 and 1988 because of overly rigid regulations issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Friday’s 5-4 ruling in the Catholic school case marked the third time in the past two weeks that the court has sided with persons claiming a religious right, rather than with government officials.

In the past, a more liberal-leaning court had insisted on a strict separation of church and state, declaring that the government may not in any way subsidize religious schools or pay for public school tutors working in parochial schools.

In a ruling that did not actually overturn any of the earlier decisions, Rehnquist on Friday made clear that the Constitution “lays down no absolute bar to the placing of a public employee in a sectarian school,” nor does it forbid church schools from obtaining a “financial benefit” from a broad-based program of education aid.

These statements could prove significant in possible court challenges involving issues such as federally funded day care or state vouchers. In 1990, Congress voted to expand federal support for child care and to permit funding for schools operating in churches. In addition, several states have funded programs for troubled youth that include participation by church-related groups.

“This removes the legal cloud over the school-choice movement,” said Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, which filed a brief supporting the parents.

But advocates of strict separation noted that the court’s opinion resolves a narrow issue and does not dramatically change the law. They agreed, however, that it retreated somewhat from past stands.

“This is the first time that the Supreme Court has allowed a public employee to assist in the delivery of instruction in a parochial school. That represents a serious erosion,” said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Steven R. Shapiro.

The school case decided Friday began when officials of an Arizona school district cited the First Amendment as their reason for refusing to pay for a sign-language interpreter for James Zobrest.

Profoundly deaf, young Zobrest had attended public schools in the early grades. But because his parents wanted him to get religious instruction, he enrolled in the ninth grade in the Salpointe Catholic High School near Tucson.

Larry and Sandra Zobrest paid the $7,000 a year cost for the interpreter, but filed a lawsuit against the public school system seeking reimbursement. The school district’s lawyers based their defense on the constitutional separation of church and state.

Based on earlier high court rulings, a federal judge in Tucson ruled that the public school officials properly refused to pay for the interpreter. Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and said that such funding would “intertwine” church and state.

Reversing that decision in the case (Zobrest vs. Catalina Foothills School District, 92-94), Rehnquist was joined by Justices White, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Without voicing a view on the substance of the matter, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens said that the case should have been sent back to Tucson to clarify the requirements of federal education law.

Justices Harry A. Blackmun and David H. Souter dissented, noting that the court had never before “authorized a public employee to participate directly in religious indoctrination.”

Meanwhile, the ruling in the tax case (Harper vs. Virginia, 91-794), could force states to refund as much as $1.8 billion. The 16 affected states had taxed the retirement money of federal workers while exempting retirees of state and local agencies.

In 1989, the justices outlawed this discriminatory policy and on a 7-2 vote Friday said that this decision applies retroactively.

The ruling in the prisoner’s case comes as something of a surprise. The court made clear that the concept of “cruel and unusual punishment” includes not only a prison beating but also prison conditions that would “pose an unreasonable risk to (the inmate’s) future health.”

By a 7-2 margin in the case (Helling vs. McKinney, 91-1958), the court agreed that being confined with a heavy smoker could pose such risk. The two dissenters, Thomas and Scalia, maintained that the Eighth Amendment applies only to the sentences handed down by judges, not to the cruel conduct of jailers.

In the immigrants’ case (Reno vs. Catholic Social Services, 91-1826), the justices agreed that the INS erred in saying that immigrants could not apply for amnesty if they left this country on a brief trip.

However, on a 6-3 vote, the justices said that only those immigrants who can show they were dissuaded from applying because of that mistaken regulation may apply now.