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Board
of Education v. Allen
392
U.S. 236 (1968)
The
Rothgerber Johnson & Lyons Religious Institutions
Group gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the
Ethics and Public Policy Center which provided the following case commentary taken from Terry Eastland, Religious
Liberty in the Supreme Court: The Cases That Define
the Debate over Church and State (1993).
The
landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education (1947)
concerned the constitutionality of state aid to church-related
schools. Twenty-one years passed before another such case
found its way to the Supreme Court. Board of Education
v. Allen then proved to be the first in a series of
cases in which the Court attempted to say which forms of
state aid to church-related schools might be permissible
under the First Amendment.
In
Allen, the Court sustained a New York state law requiring
local schools to lend textbooks free of charge to students
in grades 7 to 12, including those attending religious schools.
Members of a local school board had succeeded in persuading
the trial court that the statute violated the First Amendment.
This decision was reversed on appeal, however, and the Supreme
Court declined to upset that judgment.
Allen
produced five opinions, four of which are presented here.
(A concurrence by Justice John Harlan is omitted.) Justice
Byron White wrote for the Court, expressing the views of
six members. Justice Hugo Black, who wrote for the Court
in the landmark Everson case, here delivered his
final religion-clause opinion, and he now wrote in dissent.
Like Justice William O. Douglas, another dissenter, Justice
Black believed the Court had not adhered to the teachings
of Everson. Justice Abe Fortas wrote a dissent also.
Allen
drew immediate comment in the secular and religious press.
Presented here are editorials from The Christian Century,
the Wall Street Journal , and America.
Participating
in Board of Education v. Allen, decided June 10,
1968, were Chief Justice Earl Warren and Associate Justices
Hugo L. Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., William O. Douglas,
Abe Fortas, John M. Harlan II, Thurgood Marshall, Potter
Stewart, and Byron R. White.
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