| Opinion [ Kennedy ] | Concurrence [ O'Connor ] | Syllabus | Dissent [ Souter ] | Concurrence [ Thomas ] |
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No.
RONALD W. ROSENBERGER, et al., PETITIONERS v.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fourth circuit
[
Justice
Even assuming that the Virginia debate on the so called "Assessment Controversy" was indicative of the principles embodied in the Establishment Clause, this incident hardly compels the dissent's conclusion that government must actively discriminate against religion. The dissent's historical discussion glosses over the fundamental characteristic of the Virginia assessment bill that sparked the controversy: The assessment was to be imposed for the support of clergy in the performance of their function of teaching religion. Thus, the "Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" provided for the collection of a specific tax, the proceeds of which were to be appropriated "by the Vestries, Elders, or Directors of each religious society . . . to a provision for a Minister or Teacher of the Gospel of their denomination, or the providing places of divine worship, and to none other use whatsoever." See Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U.S. 1, 74 (1947) (appendix to dissent of Rutledge, J.). [n.1]
James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (hereinafter Madison's Remonstrance) must be understood in this context. Contrary to the dissent's suggestion, Madison's objection to the assessment bill did not rest on the premise that religious entities may never participate on equal terms in neutral government programs. Nor did Madison embrace the argument that forms the linchpin of the dissent: that monetary subsidies are constitutionally different from other neutral benefits programs. Instead, Madison's comments are more consistent with the neutrality principle that the dissent inexplicably discards. According to Madison, the Virginia assessment was flawed because it "violate[d] that equality which ought to be the basis of every law." Madison's Remonstrance ¶4, reprinted in Everson, supra, at 66 (appendix to dissent of Rutledge, J.). The assessment violated the "equality" principle not because it allowed religious groups to participate in a generally available government program, but because the bill singled out religious entities for special benefits. See ibid. (arguing that the assessment violated the equality principle "by subjecting some to peculiar burdens" and "by granting to others peculiar exemptions").
Legal commentators have disagreed about the historical lesson to take from the Assessment Controversy. For some, the experience in Virginia is consistent with the view that the Framers saw the Establishment Clause simply as a prohibition on governmental preferences for some religious faiths over others. See R. Cord, Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction 20-23 (1982); Smith, Getting Off on the Wrong Foot and Back on Again: A Reexamination of the History of the Framing of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment and a Critique of the Reynolds and Everson Decisions, 20 Wake Forest L. Rev. 569, 590-591 (1984). Other commentators have rejected this view, concluding that the Establishment Clause forbids not only government preferences for some religious sects over others, but also government preferences for religion over irreligion. See, e.g., Laycock, "Nonpreferential" Aid to Religion: A False Claim About Original Intent, 27 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 875, 875 (1986).
I find much to commend the former view. Madison's focus on the preferential nature of the assessment was not restricted to the fourth paragraph of the Remonstrance discussed above. The funding provided by the Virginia assessment was to be extended only to Christian sects, and the Remonstrance seized on this defect:
"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects." Madison's Remonstrance ¶3, reprinted in Everson, supra, at 65.
In addition to the third and fourth paragraphs of the Remonstrance, "Madison's seventh, ninth, eleventh, and twelfth arguments all speak, in some way, to the same intolerance, bigotry, unenlightenment, and persecution that had generally resulted from previous exclusive religious establishments." Cord, supra, at 21. The conclusion that Madison saw the principle of nonestablishment as barring governmental preferences for particular religious faiths seems especially clear in light of statements he made in the more relevant context of the House debates on the First Amendment. See Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 98 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (Madison's views "as reflected by actions on the floor of the House in 1789, [indicate] that he saw the [First] Amendment as designed to prohibit the establishment of a national religion, and perhaps to prevent discrimination among sects," but not "as requiring neutrality on the part of government between religion and irreligion"). Moreover, even if more extreme notions of the separation of church and state can be attributed to Madison, many of them clearly stem from "arguments reflecting the concepts of natural law, natural rights, and the social contract between government and a civil society," Cord, supra, at 22, rather than the principle of nonestablishment in the Constitution. In any event, the views of one man do not establish the original understanding of the First Amendment.
But resolution of this debate is not necessary to decide this case. Under any understanding of the Assessment Controversy, the history cited by the dissent cannot support the conclusion that the Establishment Clause "categorically condemn[s] state programs directly aiding religious activity" when that aid is part of a neutral program available to a wide array of beneficiaries. Post, at 13. Even if Madison believed that the principle of nonestablishment of religion precluded government financial support for religion per se (in the sense of government benefits specifically targeting religion), there is no indication that at the time of the framing he took the dissent's extreme view that the government must discriminate against religious adherents by excluding them from more generally available financial subsidies. [n.2]
In fact, Madison's own early legislative proposals cut against the dissent's suggestion. In 1776, when Virginia's Revolutionary Convention was drafting its Declaration of Rights, Madison prepared an amendment that would have disestablished the Anglican Church. This amendment (which went too far for the Convention and was not adopted) is not nearly as sweeping as the dissent's version of disestablishment; Madison merely wanted the Convention to declare that "no man or class of men ought, on account of religion[,] to be invested with peculiar emoluments or privileges . . . ." Madison's Amendments to the Declaration of Rights (May 29-June 12, 1776), in 1 Papers of James Madison 174 (W. Hutchinson & W. Rachal eds. 1962) (emphasis added). Likewise, Madison's Remonstrance stressed that "just government" is "best supported by protecting every citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another." Madison's Remonstrance ¶8, reprinted in Everson, supra, at 68; cf. Terrett v. Taylor, 9 Cranch 43, 49 (1815) (holding that the Virginia constitution did not prevent the government from "aiding the votaries of every sect to . . . perform their own religious duties," or from "establishing funds for the support of ministers, for public charities, for the endowment of churches, or for the sepulture of the dead").
Stripped of its flawed historical premise, the dissent's argument is reduced to the claim that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence permits neutrality in the context of access to government facilities but requires discrimination in access to government funds. The dissent purports to locate the prohibition against "direct public funding" at the "heart" of the Establishment Clause, see post, at 17, but this conclusion fails to confront historical examples of funding that date back to the time of the founding. To take but one famous example, both Houses of the First Congress elected chaplains, see S. Jour., 1st Cong., 1st Sess., 10 (1820 ed.); H. R. Jour., 1st Cong., 1st Sess., 26 (1826 ed.), and that Congress enacted legislation providing for an annual salary of $500 to be paid out of the Treasury, see Act of Sept. 22, 1789, ch. 17, §4, 1 Stat. 70, 71. Madison himself was a member of the committee that recommended the chaplain system in the House. See H. R. Jour., at 11-12; 1 Annals of Cong. 891 (1789); Cord, supra, at 25. This same system of "direct public funding" of congressional chaplains has "continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress." Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 788 (1983). [n.3]
The historical evidence of government support for religious entities through property tax exemptions is also overwhelming. As the dissent concedes, property tax exemptions for religious bodies "have been in place for over 200 years without disruption to the interests represented by the Establishment Clause." Post, at 20, n. 7 (citing Walz v. Tax Comm'n of New York City, 397 U.S. 664, 676-680 (1970)). [n.4] In my view, the dissent's acceptance of this tradition puts to rest the notion that the Establishment Clause bars monetary aid to religious groups even when the aid is equally available to other groups. A tax exemption in many cases is economically and functionally indistinguishable from a direct monetary subsidy. [n.5] In one instance, the government relieves religious entities (along with others) of a generally applicable tax; in the other, it relieves religious entities (along with others) of some or all of the burden of that tax by returning it in the form of a cash subsidy. Whether the benefit is provided at the front or back end of the taxation process, the financial aid to religious groups is undeniable. The analysis under the Establishment Clause must also be the same: "Few concepts are more deeply embedded in the fabric of our national life, beginning with pre-Revolutionary colonial times, than for the government to exercise at the very least this kind of benevolent neutrality toward churches and religious exercise . . . ." Walz, supra, at 676-677.
Consistent application of the dissent's "no aid" principle would require that " `a church could not be protected by the police and fire departments, or have its public sidewalk kept in repair.' " Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist., 509 U. S. ___, ___ (1993) (slip op., at 6) (quoting Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 274-275 (1981)). The dissent admits that "evenhandedness may become important to ensuring that religious interests are not inhibited." Post, at 18, n. 5. Surely the dissent must concede, however, that the same result should obtain whether the government provides the populace with fire protection by reimbursing the costs of smoke detectors and overhead sprinkler systems or by establishing a public fire department. If churches may benefit on equal terms with other groups in the latter program--that is, if a public fire department may extinguish fires at churches--then they may also benefit on equal terms in the former program.
Though our Establishment Clause jurisprudence is in hopeless disarray, this case provides an opportunity to reaffirm one basic principle that has enjoyed an uncharacteristic degree of consensus: The Clause does not compel the exclusion of religious groups from government benefits programs that are generally available to a broad class of participants. See Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. ___ (1993); Zobrest, supra; Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226 (1990); Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U.S. 1 (1989); Witters v. Washington Dept. of Services for Blind, 474 U.S. 481 (1986); Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388 (1983); Widmar, supra. Under the dissent's view, however, the University of Virginia may provide neutral access to the University's own printing press, but it may not provide the same service when the press is owned by a third party. Not surprisingly, the dissent offers no logical justification for this conclusion, and none is evident in the text or original meaning of the First Amendment.
If the Establishment Clause is offended when religious adherents benefit from neutral programs such as the University of Virginia's Student Activities Fund, it must also be offended when they receive the same benefits in the form of in kind subsidies. The constitutional demands of the Establishment Clause may be judged against either a baseline of "neutrality" or a baseline of "no aid to religion," but the appropriate baseline surely cannot depend on the fortuitous circumstances surrounding the form of aid. The contrary rule would lead to absurd results that would jettison centuries of practice respecting the right of religious adherents to participate on neutral terms in a wide variety of government funded programs.
Our Nation's tradition of allowing religious adherents to participate in evenhanded government programs is hardly limited to the class of "essential public benefits" identified by the dissent. See post, at 18, n. 5. A broader tradition can be traced at least as far back as the First Congress, which ratified the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. See Act of Aug. 7, 1789, ch. 8, 1 Stat. 50. Article III of that famous enactment of the Confederation Congress had provided: "Religion, morality, and knowledge . . . being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of learning shall forever be encouraged." Id., at 52, n. (a). Congress subsequently set aside federal lands in the Northwest Territory and other territories for the use of schools. See, e.g., Act of Mar. 3, 1803, ch. 21, §1, 2 Stat. 225-226; Act of Mar. 26, 1804, ch. 35, §5, 2 Stat. 279; Act of Feb. 15, 1811, ch. 14, §10, 2 Stat. 621; Act of Apr. 18, 1818, ch. 67, §6, 3 Stat. 430; Act of Apr. 20, 1818, ch. 126, §2, 3 Stat. 467. Many of the schools that enjoyed the benefits of these land grants undoubtedly were church affiliated sectarian institutions as there was no requirement that the schools be "public." See C. Antieau, A. Downey, & E. Roberts, Freedom From Federal Establishment, Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religion Clauses 163 (1964). Nevertheless, early Congresses found no problem with the provision of such neutral benefits. See also id., at 174 (noting that "almost universally[,] Americans from 1789 to 1825 accepted and practiced governmental aid to religion and religiously oriented educational institutions").
Numerous other government benefits traditionally have been available to religious adherents on neutral terms. Several examples may be found in the work of early Congresses, including copyright protection for "the author and authors of any map, chart, book or books," Act of May 31, 1790, ch. 15, §1, 1 Stat. 124, 124, and a privilege allowing "every printer of newspapers [to] send one paper to each and every other printer of newspapers within the United States, free of postage," Act of Feb. 20, 1792, ch. 7, §21, 1 Stat. 232, 238. Neither of these laws made any exclusion for the numerous authors or printers who manifested a belief in or about a deity. Thus, history provides an answer for the constitutional question posed by this case, but it is not the one given by the dissent. The dissent identifies no evidence that the Framers intended to disable religious entities from participating on neutral terms in evenhanded government programs. The evidence that does exist points in the opposite direction and provides ample support for today's decision.
Notes
1 The dissent suggests that the assessment bill would have created a "generally available subsidy program" comparable to respondent's Student Activities Fund (SAF). See post, at 7, n. 1. The dissent's characterization of the bill, however, is squarely at odds with the bill's clear purpose and effect to provide "for the support of Christian teachers." Everson, 330 U. S., at 72. Moreover, the section of the bill cited by the dissent, see post, at 7, n. 1, simply indicated that funds would be "disposed of under the direction of the General Assembly, for the encouragement of seminaries of learning within the Counties whence such sums shall arise," Everson, supra, at 74. This provision disposing of undesignated funds hardly transformed the "Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" into a truly neutral program that would benefit religious adherents as part of a large class of beneficiaries defined without reference to religion. Indeed, the only appropriation of money made by the bill would have been to promote "the general diffusion of Christian knowledge," id., at 72; any possible appropriation for "seminaries of learning" depended entirely on future legislative action.
Even assuming that future legislators would adhere to the bill's directive in appropriating the undesignated tax revenues, nothing in the bill would prevent use of those funds solely for sectarian educational institutions. To the contrary, most schools at the time of the founding were affiliated with some religious organization, see C. Antieau, A. Downey, & E. Roberts, Freedom From Federal Establishment, Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religion Clauses 163 (1964), and in fact there was no system of public education in Virginia until several decades after the assessment bill was proposed, see A. Morrison, The Beginnings of Public Education in Virginia, 1776-1860, p. 9 (1917); see also A. Johnson, The Legal Status of Church State Relationships in the United States 4 (1982) ("In Virginia the parish institutions transported from England were the earliest educational agencies. Although much of the teaching took place in the home and with the aid of tutors, every minister had a school, and it was the duty of the vestry to see that all the poor children were taught to read and write") (footnote omitted). Further, the clearly religious tenor of the Virginia assessment would seem to point toward appropriation of residual funds to sectarian "seminaries of learning." Finally, although modern historians have focused on the opt out provision, the dissent provides no indication that Madison viewed the Virginia assessment as an evenhanded program; in fact, several of the objections expressed in Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, reprinted in Everson, supra, at 63, focus clearly on the bill's violation of the principle of "equality," or evenhandedness. See infra, at 3-5.
2 To the contrary, Madison's Remonstrance decried the fact that the assessment bill would require civil society to take "cognizance" of religion. Madison's Remonstrance ¶1, reprinted in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U.S. 1, 64 (1947). Respondent's exclusion of religious activities from SAF funding creates this very problem. It requires University officials to classify publications as "religious activities," and to discriminate against the publications that fall into that category. Such a policy also contravenes the principles expressed in Madison's Remonstrance by encouraging religious adherents to cleanse their speech of religious overtones, thus "degrad[ing] from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority." Id. ¶9, reprinted in Everson, supra, at 69.
3 A number of other, less familiar examples of what amount to direct funding appear in early Acts of Congress. See, e.g. Act of Feb. 20, 1833, ch. 42, 4 Stat. 618-619 (authorizing the State of Ohio to sell "all or any part of the lands heretofore reserved and appropriated by Congress for the support of religion within the Ohio Company's . . . purchases . . . and to invest the money arising from the sale thereof, in some productive fund; the proceeds of which shall be for ever annually applied . . . for the support of religion within the several townships for which said lands were originally reserved and set apart, and for no other use or purpose whatsoever"); Act of Mar. 2, 1833, ch. 86, §§1, 3, 6 Stat. 538 (granting to Georgetown College --a Jesuit institution--"lots in the city of Washington, to the amount, in value, of twenty five thousand dollars," and directing the College to sell the lots and invest the proceeds, thereafter using the dividends to establish and endow such professorships as it saw fit); see also Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 103 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) ("As the United States moved from the 18th into the 19th century, Congress appropriated time and again public moneys in support of sectarian Indian education carried on by religious organizations").
4 The Virginia experience during the period of the Assessment Controversy itself is inconsistent with the rigid "no aid" principle embraced by the dissent. Since at least 1777, the Virginia legislature authorized tax exemptions for property belonging to the "commonwealth, or to any county, town, college, houses for divine worship, or seminary of learning." Act of Jan. 23, 1800, ch.2, §1, 1800 Va. Acts. And even Thomas Jefferson, respondent's founder and a champion of disestablishment in Virginia, advocated the use of public funds in Virginia for a department of theology in conjunction with other professional schools. See S. Padover, The Complete Jefferson 1067 (1943); see also id., at 958 (noting that Jefferson advocated giving "to the sectarian schools of divinity the full benefit [of] the public provisions made for instruction in the other branches of science ").
5 In the tax literature, this identity is called a "tax expenditure," a concept "based upon recognition of the fact that a government can appropriate money to a particular person or group by using a special, narrowly directed tax deduction or exclusion, instead of by using its ordinary direct spending mechanisms. For example, a government with a general income tax, wanting to add $7,000 to the spendable income of a preacher whose top tax rate is 30%, has two ways of subsidizing him. The government can send the preacher a check for $10,000 and tax him on all of his income, or it can authorize him to reduce his taxable income by $23,333.33 [resulting in a tax saving of $7,000]. If the direct payment were itself taxable and did not alter his tax bracket, the preacher would receive the same benefit from the tax deduction as he would from the direct payment." Wolfman, Tax Expenditures: From Idea to Ideology, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 491, 491-492 (1985). In fact, Congress has provided a similar "tax expenditure" in §107 of the Internal Revenue Code by granting a "`minister of the gospel'" an unlimited exclusion for the rental value of any home furnished as part of his pay or for the rental allowance paid to him. See id., at 492, n. 6.
Although Professor Bittker is certainly a leading scholar in the tax field, the dissent's reliance on Bittker, see post, at 20, n. 7, is misplaced in this context. See Adler, The Internal Revenue Code, The Constitution, and the Courts: The Use of Tax Expenditure Analysis in Judicial Decision Making, 28 Wake Forest L. Rev. 855, 862, n. 30 (1993):
"Early criticism of the tax expenditure concept focused on the difficulty of drawing a dividing line between what is or is not a special provision. Professor Boris Bittker, for example, argued that since no tax is all inclusive, exemptions from any tax could not be described as the equivalent of subsidies. Boris I. Bittker, Churches, Taxes and the Constitution, 78 Yale L. J. 1285 (1969). This wholesale rejection of tax expenditure analysis was short lived and attracted few supporters. Rather, the large body of literature about tax expenditures accepts the basic concept that special exemptions from tax function as subsidies. The current debate focuses on whether particular items are correctly identified as tax expenditures and whether incentive provisions are more efficient when structured as tax expenditures rather than direct spending programs. See generally [numerous authorities]."