WASHINGTON — Decades ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment’s prohibition of “establishment” of religion was violated if the government supplied maps to religious schools, but not if it supplied books. So, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., mischievously wondered: What about atlases, which are books of maps? Now comes another occasion for jurisprudential hairsplitting about contacts between the government and religious schools. At the court’s conference on April 1, the nine judicial brows will be furrowed as they consider whether to hear a case from Maine that poses this question: Is it constitutional for that state to say that parents can use state aid to pay tuition at religious schools if the schools are not too religious. If, that is, they are not excessively serious about religion, with excess to be determined by government officials measuring such things with some unspecified theological micrometer. In 1925, the court, in unanimously striking down an Oregon law requiring children to attend public schools, declared that a child’s education is within “the liberty of the parents and guardians to direct.” Nineteen years ago, the court upheld a Cleveland program empowering parents to redeem publicly funded vouchers at religious as well as […]
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