SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
This is an article about the Supreme Court I got off of ISCA
NY Times
June 12, 2001
SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP
Top Court Gives Religious Clubs Equal Footing in Grade Schools
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, June 11 Q The Supreme Court ruled today that public schools must open their doors to after-school religious activities, including those that involve young children, on the same basis as any other after-hours activity that school policy permits. The 6-to-3 decision extended to elementary school property the same constitutional principle the court has already applied to public high schools and colleges: that the expression of a religious viewpoint is speech, protected by the First Amendment against discrimination and entitled on a neutral basis to access to public facilities that are open to other speakers. Letting the Good News Club, an evangelical Christian organization, use a room in an upstate New York school building on the same basis as other groups "would ensure neutrality, not threaten it," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. The decision overturned a ruling last year by the federal appeals court in Manhattan, which held that in excluding the club, the Milford, N.Y., school district was not discriminating against religious speech but was following a valid policy of not permitting "quintessentially religious" subjects to be taught on school property. Beyond reiterating the court's well-established neutrality principle, the significance of the opinion today lay in the court's rejection of the argument that young children are particularly vulnerable to mistaking equal access for official endorsement and that the rules should thus be different for elementary school. "We cannot say the danger that children would misperceive the endorsement of religion is any greater than the danger that they would perceive a hostility toward the religious viewpoint if the club were excluded from the public forum," Justice Thomas said. The others in the majority were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy andStephen G. Breyer, who provided the sixth vote with a rather equivocal concurring opinion. Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter wrote dissenting opinions, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg signing Justice Souter's opinion. The dissenters offered a substantially different characterization than did the majority of the activity the Good News Club conducted as soon as the school day ended at the Milford Central School. While Justice Thomas described it as teaching character and values from a religious point of view, both dissenting opinions said the activity consisted of worship and evangelizing. "It is beyond question that Good News intends to use the public school premises not for the mere discussion of a subject from a particular, Christian point of view," Justice Souter said, "but for an evangelical service of worship calling children to commit themselves in an act of Christian conversion." The majority's description "ignores reality," he said. Good News Clubs are sponsored by a national organization, the Child Evangelism Fellowship Inc., which described itself in a brief to the court as seeking to "evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ." The fellowship, based in Warrenton, Mo., operates in 142 countriesand has 4,622 Good News Clubs in the United States, 527 of which meet on school property. Although Justice Thomas insisted that "the club's activities do not constitute mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values," it was not clear what difference, if any, that distinction made to the majority's analysis. "At least five justices see no distinction between talking about religion, worshipping and recruiting young children to the faith," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said today. Mr. Lynn, a lawyer, predicted the decision would "create a battlefield out of America's elementary schools." In New York City, Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Board of Education, said, "my understanding is that as a general matter of policy it is not permitted to have religious meetings to avoid excessive entanglement issues." Religious groups, she said, can hold nonreligious meetings so long as they do not collect fees. For example, a church could hold a meeting national welfare policy, she said, but not a prayer service.and has 4,622 Good News Clubs in the United States, 527 of which meet on school property. Although Justice Thomas insisted that "the club's activities do not constitute mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values," it was not clear what difference, if any, that distinction made to the majority's analysis. "At least five justices see no distinction between talking about religion, worshipping and recruiting young children to the faith," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said today. Mr. Lynn, a lawyer, predicted the decision would "create a battlefield out of America's elementary schools." In New York City, Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Board of Education, said, "my understanding is that as a general matter of policy it is not permitted to have religious meetings to avoid excessive entanglement issues." Religious groups, she said, can hold nonreligious meetings so long as they do not collect fees. For example, a church could hold a meeting national welfare policy, she said, but not a prayer service."In light of the ruling," she added, "we'll have to review the policy in order to ensure that the school system acts constitutionally." Edwin Darden, senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association, said the decision placed local school boards in a difficult position, threatening local control and "setting up a competition between different religious groups trying to gain the religious fidelity of children." He said the option of closing elementary schools to all outside groups, while permissible under the ruling, would not often prove a practical or attractive one. The Good News Club drew support from a wide spectrum of religious organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. Other Jewish groups supported the school district, which is between Albany and Syracuse. The American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group affiliated with the Rev. Pat Robertson, said the decision "clearly shows there is no constitutional crisis created when a religious organization receives the same treatment afforded to other organizations," according to Jay Sekulow, its chief counsel. In 1993, Mr. Sekulow argued and won another religion case from New York,court held that school property must be open to outside groups with religious messages if other messages were permitted. The Lamb's Chapel case involved an adult activity during evening hours, the showing of a Christian film series. A major question in the case today, Good News Club v. Milford Central School, No. 99-2036, was whether the same analysis should apply to activities for young children, ranging in age from 6 to 12, that begin as soon as the school day ends. Another question was whether the school district could defend excluding the group as necessary to avoid violating the separation of church and state, as the First Amendment's Establishment Clause requires. But the court's precedents made clear that "the school has no valid Establishment Clause interest," Justice Thomas wrote. The court decided six cases today, leaving 14 to go before the justices bring the term to a close. A transition was marked in the courtroom this morning as Chief Justice Rehnquist welcomed Theodore B. Olson, newly confirmed as solicitor general. The chief justice expressed the court's appreciation to Barbara Dcourt held that school property must be open to outside groups with religious messages if other messages were permitted. The Lamb's Chapel case involved an adult activity during evening hours, the showing of a Christian film series. A major question in the case today, Good News Club v. Milford Central School, No. 99-2036, was whether the same analysis should apply to activities for young children, ranging in age from 6 to 12, that begin as soon as the school day ends. Another question was whether the school district could defend excluding the group as necessary to avoid violating the separation of church and state, as the First Amendment's Establishment Clause requires. But the court's precedents made clear that "the school has no valid Establishment Clause interest," Justice Thomas wrote. The court decided six cases today, leaving 14 to go before the justices bring the term to a close. A transition was marked in the courtroom this morning as Chief Justice Rehnquist welcomed Theodore B. Olson, newly confirmed as solicitor general. The chief justice expressed the court's appreciation to Barbara DUnderwood, a deputy solicitor general in the Clinton administration who served an unusually long time as acting solicitor general because of Mr. Olson's confirmation battle. These were among the day's other developments: Sex and Citizenship By a 5-to-4 vote, the court upheld the constitutionality of a provision of immigration law that treats differently the mothers and fathers of children born out of wedlock overseas when only one parent is a United States citizen. If the mother is the citizen, the child is deemed an American citizen at birth. But a citizen-father in the same circumstance must take affirmative steps to acknowledge paternity, like a sworn statement or court order, before the child turns 18. The provision was challenged as unconstitutional sex discrimination by the American father of a Vietnamese-born son, whom the father had brought to the United States at the age of 6 and raised in Texas. But the father, Joseph Boulais, did not take the required formal steps to acknowledge his son, Tuan Anh Nguyen, who at the age of 22 was ordered deported after pleading guilty to sexual assault. The Board of Immigration Appeals, in a decision upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, rejected the argument that the son was actually an American citizen and thus not subject to deportation. Writing for the court today, Justice Kennedy said the law's sex-based distinction was constitutional because "fathers and mothers are not similarly situated with regard to the proof of biological parenthood." He said the distinction was not based on an impermissible stereotype but on a valid interest in assuring not just genetic parenthood Q which could be established by a DNA test Q but on "facilitation of a relationship" between the child and the American citizen parent. The opinion, Nguyen v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, No. 99-2071, was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and by Justices Stevens, Scalia and Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote a strongly worded dissenting opinion that Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer joined. "No one should mistake the majority's analysis for a careful application of this court's equal-protection jurisprudence concerning sex-based classifications," she said, calling the decision an "aberration" and "deviation" from the court's scrupulous examination of sex discrimination. The majority opinion, she said, "may itself simply reflect the stereotype of male irresponsibility that is no more a basis for the validity of the classification than are stereotypes about the `traditional' behavior patterns of women." Death Sentence Acting on the basis of the decision last week in the case of a retarded death-row inmate, Johnny Paul Penry, the court overturned the death sentence of another Texas inmate whose sentencing jury had received the same deficient instruction on how to consider mitigating evidence. Justice O'Connor, writing for the majority in the Penry case, found that the instruction had not permitted the jurors "to make a reasoned moral response" to the mitigating evidence he offered of his retardation and his history of severe abuse as child. The inmate in this case, Mark Robertson, who was convicted in 1991 of three murders, is not retarded but sought to argue that the abuse he suffered in childhood led to his loss of self-control. His death sentence was upheld six months ago by the Fifth Circuit on the basis of the same analysis that the Supreme Court rejected last week. The court today did not issue an opinion, simply instructing the Fifth Circuit to reconsider the case, Robertson v. Johnson, No. 00-1479, in light of the Penry decision.
NY Times
June 12, 2001
SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP
Top Court Gives Religious Clubs Equal Footing in Grade Schools
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, June 11 Q The Supreme Court ruled today that public schools must open their doors to after-school religious activities, including those that involve young children, on the same basis as any other after-hours activity that school policy permits. The 6-to-3 decision extended to elementary school property the same constitutional principle the court has already applied to public high schools and colleges: that the expression of a religious viewpoint is speech, protected by the First Amendment against discrimination and entitled on a neutral basis to access to public facilities that are open to other speakers. Letting the Good News Club, an evangelical Christian organization, use a room in an upstate New York school building on the same basis as other groups "would ensure neutrality, not threaten it," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. The decision overturned a ruling last year by the federal appeals court in Manhattan, which held that in excluding the club, the Milford, N.Y., school district was not discriminating against religious speech but was following a valid policy of not permitting "quintessentially religious" subjects to be taught on school property. Beyond reiterating the court's well-established neutrality principle, the significance of the opinion today lay in the court's rejection of the argument that young children are particularly vulnerable to mistaking equal access for official endorsement and that the rules should thus be different for elementary school. "We cannot say the danger that children would misperceive the endorsement of religion is any greater than the danger that they would perceive a hostility toward the religious viewpoint if the club were excluded from the public forum," Justice Thomas said. The others in the majority were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy andStephen G. Breyer, who provided the sixth vote with a rather equivocal concurring opinion. Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter wrote dissenting opinions, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg signing Justice Souter's opinion. The dissenters offered a substantially different characterization than did the majority of the activity the Good News Club conducted as soon as the school day ended at the Milford Central School. While Justice Thomas described it as teaching character and values from a religious point of view, both dissenting opinions said the activity consisted of worship and evangelizing. "It is beyond question that Good News intends to use the public school premises not for the mere discussion of a subject from a particular, Christian point of view," Justice Souter said, "but for an evangelical service of worship calling children to commit themselves in an act of Christian conversion." The majority's description "ignores reality," he said. Good News Clubs are sponsored by a national organization, the Child Evangelism Fellowship Inc., which described itself in a brief to the court as seeking to "evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ." The fellowship, based in Warrenton, Mo., operates in 142 countriesand has 4,622 Good News Clubs in the United States, 527 of which meet on school property. Although Justice Thomas insisted that "the club's activities do not constitute mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values," it was not clear what difference, if any, that distinction made to the majority's analysis. "At least five justices see no distinction between talking about religion, worshipping and recruiting young children to the faith," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said today. Mr. Lynn, a lawyer, predicted the decision would "create a battlefield out of America's elementary schools." In New York City, Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Board of Education, said, "my understanding is that as a general matter of policy it is not permitted to have religious meetings to avoid excessive entanglement issues." Religious groups, she said, can hold nonreligious meetings so long as they do not collect fees. For example, a church could hold a meeting national welfare policy, she said, but not a prayer service.and has 4,622 Good News Clubs in the United States, 527 of which meet on school property. Although Justice Thomas insisted that "the club's activities do not constitute mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values," it was not clear what difference, if any, that distinction made to the majority's analysis. "At least five justices see no distinction between talking about religion, worshipping and recruiting young children to the faith," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said today. Mr. Lynn, a lawyer, predicted the decision would "create a battlefield out of America's elementary schools." In New York City, Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Board of Education, said, "my understanding is that as a general matter of policy it is not permitted to have religious meetings to avoid excessive entanglement issues." Religious groups, she said, can hold nonreligious meetings so long as they do not collect fees. For example, a church could hold a meeting national welfare policy, she said, but not a prayer service."In light of the ruling," she added, "we'll have to review the policy in order to ensure that the school system acts constitutionally." Edwin Darden, senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association, said the decision placed local school boards in a difficult position, threatening local control and "setting up a competition between different religious groups trying to gain the religious fidelity of children." He said the option of closing elementary schools to all outside groups, while permissible under the ruling, would not often prove a practical or attractive one. The Good News Club drew support from a wide spectrum of religious organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. Other Jewish groups supported the school district, which is between Albany and Syracuse. The American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group affiliated with the Rev. Pat Robertson, said the decision "clearly shows there is no constitutional crisis created when a religious organization receives the same treatment afforded to other organizations," according to Jay Sekulow, its chief counsel. In 1993, Mr. Sekulow argued and won another religion case from New York,court held that school property must be open to outside groups with religious messages if other messages were permitted. The Lamb's Chapel case involved an adult activity during evening hours, the showing of a Christian film series. A major question in the case today, Good News Club v. Milford Central School, No. 99-2036, was whether the same analysis should apply to activities for young children, ranging in age from 6 to 12, that begin as soon as the school day ends. Another question was whether the school district could defend excluding the group as necessary to avoid violating the separation of church and state, as the First Amendment's Establishment Clause requires. But the court's precedents made clear that "the school has no valid Establishment Clause interest," Justice Thomas wrote. The court decided six cases today, leaving 14 to go before the justices bring the term to a close. A transition was marked in the courtroom this morning as Chief Justice Rehnquist welcomed Theodore B. Olson, newly confirmed as solicitor general. The chief justice expressed the court's appreciation to Barbara Dcourt held that school property must be open to outside groups with religious messages if other messages were permitted. The Lamb's Chapel case involved an adult activity during evening hours, the showing of a Christian film series. A major question in the case today, Good News Club v. Milford Central School, No. 99-2036, was whether the same analysis should apply to activities for young children, ranging in age from 6 to 12, that begin as soon as the school day ends. Another question was whether the school district could defend excluding the group as necessary to avoid violating the separation of church and state, as the First Amendment's Establishment Clause requires. But the court's precedents made clear that "the school has no valid Establishment Clause interest," Justice Thomas wrote. The court decided six cases today, leaving 14 to go before the justices bring the term to a close. A transition was marked in the courtroom this morning as Chief Justice Rehnquist welcomed Theodore B. Olson, newly confirmed as solicitor general. The chief justice expressed the court's appreciation to Barbara DUnderwood, a deputy solicitor general in the Clinton administration who served an unusually long time as acting solicitor general because of Mr. Olson's confirmation battle. These were among the day's other developments: Sex and Citizenship By a 5-to-4 vote, the court upheld the constitutionality of a provision of immigration law that treats differently the mothers and fathers of children born out of wedlock overseas when only one parent is a United States citizen. If the mother is the citizen, the child is deemed an American citizen at birth. But a citizen-father in the same circumstance must take affirmative steps to acknowledge paternity, like a sworn statement or court order, before the child turns 18. The provision was challenged as unconstitutional sex discrimination by the American father of a Vietnamese-born son, whom the father had brought to the United States at the age of 6 and raised in Texas. But the father, Joseph Boulais, did not take the required formal steps to acknowledge his son, Tuan Anh Nguyen, who at the age of 22 was ordered deported after pleading guilty to sexual assault. The Board of Immigration Appeals, in a decision upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, rejected the argument that the son was actually an American citizen and thus not subject to deportation. Writing for the court today, Justice Kennedy said the law's sex-based distinction was constitutional because "fathers and mothers are not similarly situated with regard to the proof of biological parenthood." He said the distinction was not based on an impermissible stereotype but on a valid interest in assuring not just genetic parenthood Q which could be established by a DNA test Q but on "facilitation of a relationship" between the child and the American citizen parent. The opinion, Nguyen v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, No. 99-2071, was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and by Justices Stevens, Scalia and Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote a strongly worded dissenting opinion that Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer joined. "No one should mistake the majority's analysis for a careful application of this court's equal-protection jurisprudence concerning sex-based classifications," she said, calling the decision an "aberration" and "deviation" from the court's scrupulous examination of sex discrimination. The majority opinion, she said, "may itself simply reflect the stereotype of male irresponsibility that is no more a basis for the validity of the classification than are stereotypes about the `traditional' behavior patterns of women." Death Sentence Acting on the basis of the decision last week in the case of a retarded death-row inmate, Johnny Paul Penry, the court overturned the death sentence of another Texas inmate whose sentencing jury had received the same deficient instruction on how to consider mitigating evidence. Justice O'Connor, writing for the majority in the Penry case, found that the instruction had not permitted the jurors "to make a reasoned moral response" to the mitigating evidence he offered of his retardation and his history of severe abuse as child. The inmate in this case, Mark Robertson, who was convicted in 1991 of three murders, is not retarded but sought to argue that the abuse he suffered in childhood led to his loss of self-control. His death sentence was upheld six months ago by the Fifth Circuit on the basis of the same analysis that the Supreme Court rejected last week. The court today did not issue an opinion, simply instructing the Fifth Circuit to reconsider the case, Robertson v. Johnson, No. 00-1479, in light of the Penry decision.
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