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Mueller
v. Allen
463
U.S. 388 (1983)
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).
Returning
to the vexed issue of public aid to church-related schools,
the Supreme Court in Mueller v. Allen upheld a Minnesota
law allowing deduction of school tuition costs against income
taxes. The deduction was available to all parents of school-age
children, regardless of the nature of the schools the children
attended —public or private, church-related or secular.
Minnesota taxpayers had challenged the law on grounds that
it provided financial help to sectarian institutions, and
in fact almost all the deductions taken were claimed by
parents of children in church-related schools. But the federal
district court held that the statute did not violate the
ban on establishment, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Eighth Circuit affirmed, maintaining that the law benefited
a broad class of the state's citizens.
Mueller
v. Allen produced two opinions, Justice William Rehnquist
wrote for the Court, reflecting the views of five members,
and Justice Thurgood Marshall filed a dissent joined by
Justices Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, and John Paul
Stevens. Both opinions are presented here, followed by editorial
responses from the Washington Post and the Wall
Street Journal.
Participating
in Mueller v. Allen, decided June 29, 1983, were
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justices Harry
A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall,
Sandra Day O'Connor, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist,
John Paul Stevens, and Byron R White.
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