Saturday, July 5, 1997

Supreme Court decisions please, infuriate church leaders

By Mike McManus

The words of the Constitution's First Amendment are so simple that it is remarkable that they sparked 100+ pages of Supreme Court cases in two cases this week: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

The court's decisions simultaneously pleased and infuriated America's religious leaders.

First, the court voted 6-3 to declare unconstitutional a 1993 law that Congress passed almost unanimously, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), that prohibited government from infringing on religious freedom unless it could demonstrate a "compelling interest" to do so.

The ruling was sparked by a dispute between St. Peter's Catholic Church and the small Texas town of Boerne. With 2,000 members and a 75-year-old facility that could seat only 250,the church wanted to expand. Boerne's historical commission refused to let it do so. St. Peter's cited RFRA to argue its religious freedom was being limited without a "compelling" reason.

Congress enacted RFRA in response to a 1990 Supreme Court decision upholding an Oregon law challenged by native Americans that denied their "free exercise" right to use small amounts of peyote in religious ceremonies. The Court said that laws that are neutral toward religion can be valid even if they infringe on some people's religious beliefs.

The case prompted the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Jewish groups and even the ACLU in a rare moment of unity to call for RFRA to prevent infringement of religious freedom.

"Every religion is in the minority somewhere. Baptists are a minority in Utah, and Mormons in Mississippi. Their freedom of religion may be limited by governments unintentionally restricting religion," said the Rev. Oliver Thomas, National Council of Churches spokesman.

Catholic teaching hospitals can lose accreditation for refusing to do abortions. When Chuck Colson went to prison for Watergate crimes, he was shocked at how "prison officials often discouraged prisoners' participation in religious programs" though they can change inmate hearts.

However, the Supreme Court saw no widespread pattern of religious discrimination that justified Congressional action like laws Congress passed to protect black civil rights in the '60s. And it saw Congress infringing on the Court's role to protect religious freedom. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared, "It is this court's precedent...which must control."

The decision sparked outrage across religious lines: "The Supreme Court today struck down America's best protection for real religious freedom," said NCC's Thomas. The American Jewish Congress called the decision "a huge blow to religious liberty." Colson charged the court made "a direct assault on the First Amendment...that genuinely imperils religious liberty."

The other Supreme Court case this week, Agostini v. Felton, reversed a Supreme Court decision 12 years ago that prohibited public schools from sending remedial math/reading teachers into Catholic schools to improve the education of disadvantaged children. The Elementary &Secondary Education Act of 1965 is the greatest source of federal funding for public education,and is targeted to help poor children, whether they attend public or parochial schools.

In the earlier case, Aguilar v. Felton, the Court argued that the law promoted an'excessive entanglement of church and state' by permitting public school teachers to work in religious schools. Therefore, New York City alone spent more than $100 million since 1987 to create alternative sites (mobile classrooms) and transporting Catholic kids to them.

But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for a 5-4 majority, found that federal aid for poor children 'does not result in governmental indoctrination" or create excessive entanglement. "We therefore hold that a federally funded program providing supplemental remedial instruction to disadvantaged children on a neutral basis is not invalid under the Establishment clause."

The Court said it was wrong to force New York "to spend millions of dollars on mobile instructional units" when it could spend the money giving poor kids "a better chance at success."

"I am tickled with the decision," said Mark Chopko, general counsel of the Catholic bishops. "The court did something remarkable. It admitted it made some mistakes." Forest Montgomery of the National Association of Evangelicals adds, "It is a landmark case which bodes well for those who advocate school vouchers are constitutional."

Of course, that is downright alarming to many Protestants and Jews.