What next for church and state?

Last updated on: June 27, 2017 at 8:27 pm by Jane the Actuary

What next for church and state? 2017-06-27T20:27:15-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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from flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andwat/3458528092; creative commons 2.0

Monday: “Missouri church wins playground case in Supreme Court,” in, well, pretty much everywhere, but in this case, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court overturned lower courts Monday and decided in favor of a Columbia, Mo., church, that had argued that its constitutional rights had been violated by the state Department of Natural Resources’ denial of scrap rubber for its playground.

Writing for the majority in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia vs. Comer, Chief Justice John Roberts proclaimed that Trinity was “asserting a right to participate in a government benefit program without having to disavow its religious character.

“The express discrimination against religious exercise here is not the denial of a grant, but rather the refusal to allow the church — solely because it is a church — to compete with secular organizations for a grant,” Roberts wrote, in a decision in which Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Samuel Alito concurred.

Not everyone is happy; Noah Feldman, writing at Bloomberg, complains that the decision “weakens the wall of separation between church and state to an unprecedented degree,” which seems rather overblown, fretting that

the Supreme Court hasn’t yet held that a state may directly pay for ministers who teach the gospel by, say, creating a funding program for all community organizations’ leaders. But the court very certainly headed in that direction.

Tuesday: “High court: Religious school admissions can be reviewed” in the Detroit News. Now, in this case, the “high court” is the Michigan Supreme Court, not SCOTUS itself.

The story:

State courts can intervene in some admission decisions at private religious schools, the Michigan Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling issued Tuesday.

The 7-0 opinion written by Justice Bridget McCormack said state courts have jurisdiction over private schools in determining whether they violated the Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act in admission decisions.

The case stems from the Notre Dame Preparatory High School’s rejection of Bettina Winkler’s application. Winkler’s parents sued Notre Dame and the Marist Fathers of Detroit Inc., alleging the school violated federal anti-discrimination law for rejecting Winkler because of a learning disability.

Specifically, Winkler had attended the Marist Fathers’ middle school but had been diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and for this reason, she was not allowed to continue to the high school.

So this decision comes as a surprise, as I would have considered it fairly straightforward that private schools have the ability to determine which learning-disabled children they can and cannot take on, given their level of resources. Near as I can understand it, the school had claimed that the religious nature of the school had provided them with an absolute exemption from the Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act, but the State Supreme Court rejected this claim. According to a prior article, the school’s attorney James Walsh

said religion “permeates” every aspect of education at the Notre Dame High, and said the student’s disability would have thwarted the school’s mission to “effectively convey” its religious message.

In other words, the issue didn’t seem to be that they didn’t have the resources to meet her needs, but that she would be disruptive, and thus they created a connection, however tenuous, because it would prevent them from instructing in religion (as well as everything else). Perhaps the state already provides funding for additional instruction, or the family intended to get separate tutoring, so that it really boiled down to behavior in the classroom, and the school claiming that it was exempt from the burden that other schools bore, of disruptive children, due to its religious status.

And at this point, I will very carefully avoid making any claim about whether this was right or wrong, because I don’t have enough knowledge around the law in question to make that determination. But, readers, you’re welcome to chew on this with me.

Image: from flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andwat/3458528092; creative commons 2.0

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