WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that states do not have to give students preparing for careers in the clergy the same access to taxpayer-funded college aid that other students receive.
By a vote of 7-2, the court said that Washington state’s Promise Scholarship program, which offers cash assistance to all academically qualified low-income college students as long as they are not majoring in theology, does not unlawfully discriminate against prospective clergy or violate their First Amendment right to religious freedom.
The Washington program "imposes neither criminal nor civil sanctions on any type of religious service or rite," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the opinion for the court. "It does not deny to ministers the right to participate in the political affairs of the community. And it does not require students to choose between their religious beliefs and receiving a government benefit."
Though the court had ruled in 2002 that the Constitution’s ban on establishment of official religion does not prohibit state tuition aid for religious-school students, Wednesday’s decision made clear that the Constitution’s guarantee of individual religious freedom does not necessarily obligate states to provide equal aid for religious and secular education.
The case was originally brought by Joshua Davey, who was denied a Promise Scholarship to attend a small Pentecostal college in Washington in 1999 after he declared an intention to major in business administration and pastoral ministries. Though the court’s decision came in the relatively narrow context of religious higher education, its immediate impact is likely to be greatest in the continuing battle over publicly funded vouchers for primary and secondary private schools.
That struggle had appeared to shift clearly in favor of voucher advocates after the court’s 2002 ruling. But it now seems destined instead for extended legal trench warfare at the state level.
Since 2002, voucher opponents had focused their legal efforts on the states, taking advantage of the fact that 36 state constitutions — including Washington’s — have provisions that are more specifically restrictive toward public aid for religious education than the federal Constitution. Wednesday’s decision, which spoke approvingly of the "play in the joints" between national and state constitutional rules, may fortify opponents’ arguments.
For their part, religious conservatives and free-market voucher advocates, supported by the Bush administration, had seen the Washington state case as an opportunity for a Supreme Court ruling that would have overturned the state constitutional provisions.
But having failed Wednesday to achieve the hoped-for knockout blow, advocates of vouchers emphasized those parts of Wednesday’s opinion that seemed to limit the ruling to the Washington situation.
"My favorite passage in the whole opinion is where it says, ‘The only interest at issue here is the State’s interest in not funding the religious training of clergy,’ " said Clark Neily, an attorney for the libertarian Institute for Justice.
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