The Court said there was no evidence to suggest that any teacher under the program and question had attempted to inculcate religion in students. Moreover, the cooperation required between the parochial school employees and the public employees regarding student progress was the same, regardless of the location of the classes. The Court determined that it did "not see any perceptible (let alone dispositive) difference in the degree of symbolic union between a student receiving remedial instruction in a classroom on his sectarian school's campus and one receiving instruction in a van parked just at the school's curbside" [521 U.S. 203]. Next, the Court has abandoned the rule that all government aid that aids the educational function of religious schools is unconstitutional. A prior decision permitted the placement of a publicly-funded sign language interpreter in a private school. Both types of aid were intended to help students, regardless of the school they chose to attend. The Court rejected claims that the provision of remedial services would reduce the burden on parochial schools and, therefore, indirectly provide financial aid for religious instruction. The Court believed that it was possible to distinguish between supplemental and general education. The Court determined that there was no financial incentive to engage in a program, where aid was allocated on the basis of neutral, secular criteria, and where such aid was made available to potential beneficiaries without regard to religion.

Finally, the Court determined that the program in question did not result in an excessive entanglement between church and state. To assess entanglement, the court must consider the character of the benefited institutions, the nature of the state aid, and the resulting relationship between the government and the religious organization. However, the Court also recognizes that not all entanglements have an impact on religion, and that...

In fact, the entanglement in question, most of the objectionable entanglement would occur regardless of where services were offered, because the remedial teachers would need to interact with the student's regular parochial teachers to assess progress.
Finally, the Court considered the doctrine of stare decisis and concluded that stare decisis did not preclude the Court from overruling its prior decisions. The Court has previously stated that the doctrine of stare decisis is of limited utility in constitutional law, because of the importance that the law be decided right and not just decided consistently. For the same reasons, the Court refused to recognize the law of the case doctrine.

Analysis

By the time the Court reviewed the case there was case law allowing for public employees to provide assistance to students in private, parochial schools, as long as that assistance was neutral and involved no religious inculcation. That decision necessarily rejected the idea that a public employee's presence in a private school sent a message of unity between church and state. Moreover, the Court looked at the degree of entanglement between public and private school employees under the Title I program when the program was provided on the parochial school campus and when it was provided in a different location and found no meaningful difference in the degrees of entanglement. Because there was no evidence that the program in question actually impacted religious freedom, either of the students receiving services or of taxpayers, the Court concluded that the program was permissible.

Conclusion

The Court reversed the appellate court's decision and remanded to the District Court with directions to vacate its order.

References

Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203 (1997).

Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S.402 (1985).