Are the "Blaine Amendments" the final obstacle to public funding of religious schools and faith-based social programs?

onstitutional amendments in three-dozen states which ban the use of public funds to aid sectarian schools are the latest target of religious groups who insist the laws are anti-Catholic.

   Known as "Blaine Amendments," the statutes often employ more expansive and focused language that the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting states from funding faith-based schools and other kinds of religious programs as well. They are named after James Blaine, a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives who in 1875 introduced a constitutional amendment in Congress banning the use of any public funds to subsidize religious schools. Robert Ingersoll, "the Great Agnostic" referred to Blaine as "the Plumed Knight" for his efforts to preserve secularism, and offered Blaine's name in nomination at the 1876 Republican Convention. The federal amendment passed the House 180 to 7 (98 not voting), but in slightly modified form failed in the Senate 28 to 16 with 27 abstentions.

   Still, individual states enacted tough legislation to prevent the use of tax money for any sectarian schools. Blaine was not the only inspiration for such measures. In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant had proposed a constitutional amendment, and on September 30, in an address to the Society of the Army of Tennessee declared:

"Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar, appropriated for their support, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian schools. Resolve that neither the state nor the nation, nor both combined, shall support institutions of learning other than those sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistical dogmas. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church and private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate."

   Today, Grant's wise admonition is ignored by a slew of religious groups clamoring for public money in order to operate sectarian schools. The debate over school funding also touches on another volatile issue -- the use of public money to support religion-based social programs administered by churches and other houses of worship. Doing away with constitutional restraints to meet one of these goals would inevitably affect the other. The "Blaine amendments" thus stand as a key obstacle to a wide range of political and clerical interest groups intent on opening up the public treasury to faith-based projects.

   Currently, these amendments exist in various forms in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

   The wording of the statutes varies.

   The Constitution of Illinois, for instance, states in Article X, Sec. 3:

"PUBLIC FUNDS FOR SECTARIAN PURPOSES FORBIDDEN. Neither the General Assembly nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation to pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money or other personal property ever be made by the State, or any such public corporation, to any church, or for any sectarian purpose.."

   Michigan is slightly less restrictive. Article VIII of the state constitution declares that "No public monies or property shall be appropriated or paid or any public credit utilized ..." for sectarian schools, but "The legislature may provide for the transportation of students to and from any school."

   The Michigan amendment also specifically mentions tuition vouchers, subsidies, tax benefits and direct payments as prohibited if they benefit a religious school.

   The origin and fate of the "Blaine Amendments" is closely tied to the historical debate over funding of Parochial (Roman Catholic) and other schools controlled by sectarian religious groups. This issue has become especially urgent in light of the June 27, 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case ZELMAN v. SIMMONS-HARRIS, where justices ruled that a Cleveland, Ohio school voucher program passed constitutional muster. The Establishment Clause,said the majority, which prohibits any state religion is violated only if a religious program receiving public funds lacks a "secular legislative purpose" or if its "primary or principal effect is to advance religion." Supporters of the Cleveland program argued -- and the justices agreed -- that the voucher scheme offered sufficient educational choices to parents, and did not advance a specific religion over another. Critics were astounded, of courses, since most of the schools involved were Roman Catholic. President Bush, a big supporter of vouchers and other aid to religious groups, said that the ruling was "just as historic" as the landmark civil rights case, BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION.

   Just six weeks after the narrowly-focused ZELMAN decision, though, aid-to-religious schools supporters were frustrated when a Florida court declared the state's voucher program unconstitutional. The "Blaine amendment" there and in other states were cited as obstacles to voucher programs and more ambitious schemes to divert money to religion-based groups. Organizations such as the Beckett Fund, a religious advocacy association, and the Federalist Society have since then launched systematic efforts to circumvent the amendments, or have them declared unconstitutional. A white paper published by the Federalist Society argues that the amendments can be overturned since they presumably violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. A decision by the Arizona Supreme Court has also energized voucher supporters, arguing that the state's amendment against subsidizing religious schools was "a clear manifestation of bigotry."

   Insisting that the amendments are rooted in anti-Catholic sentiment from the 1800s has become a stock-in-trade tactic for many voucher boosters.

   Pat Korten of the Beckett Fund told reporters , "When they were originally adopted as part of state constitutions, the motive was virtually always anti-Catholic animus."

   Another Fund official, Kevin Hasson, described the statutes as "dirty little secrets from the anti-immigrant past" that "enshrine bigotry in many state constitutions."

   But the historical record is more complex than anti-amendment groups may want to admit. In fact, some of the statutes pre-date James Blaine's proposed amendment, and while manyarose during a period of deep religious division -- and intolerance -- in American history, these amendments were also the result of other factors such as the growth of the public school system and the debate over universal education.

   ¶       In the late 1700s, with the churches of America "disestablished" and removed from the public dole, sectarians lodged demands that tax money be used to support religious schools. In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were so aroused by these schemes that the former drafted his famous "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom," while Madison penned his celebrated essay, "A Memorial and Remonstrance." Both criticized what Madison described as an entitlement plan "providing for the legal support of the teachers of the Christian religion."

   In time, "free schools" or public education were established in many areas. New York ended its subsidies for sectarian schools around 1824.

   ¶       In 1838, Catholic Bishop John Hughes of New York demanded that the state fund Parochial schools since the public schools were ostensibly awash in Protestant influences. When legislators rejected the petition, Hughes organized the Church and State Party that nominated a slate of two senators and thirteen assembly candidates for the legislature. All were elected, and with this new power, the Catholic leadership then had introduced a bill to give control of all schools to local boards that would decide which religion might dominate each school district. The measure passed the New York House of Representatives on March 31, 1842, although the Senate balked, and an amended form was narrowly approved. Local control became law, but sectarian instruction was still outlawed in the public schools.

   When word reached New York City, mobs of Roman Catholics and Protestants took to the streets.

   Today, Blaine's federal amendment is described by voucher and other aid-to-religion groups as an example of anti-Catholic bigotry. But the proposed legislation safeguarded the country against the use of public money to benefit any and all religious denominations. It stated:

"No State shall make any laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of the public schools, or derived from any public fund be under the control of any religious sect, nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects and denominations."

   ¶       Voucher groups argue that the Blaine Amendments were the result of anti-Catholic bias in mid-to-late nineteenth century America. In fact, it was Congress that insisted that new territories seeking admission to the federal Union adopt various amendments guaranteeing that the public school systems be "free from sectarian control." Madalyn O'Hair, in her book "Freedom Under Siege," noted: "Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington, admitted in 1889, and Idaho and Wyoming, admitted in 1890, were the first to comply."

   ¶       Was James Blaine an anti-Catholic bigot as some voucher groups portray him? In truth, he was a secularist born to a "loosely Presbyterian father and a Catholic mother," notes a profile from World Magazine. Marvin Olasky, a supporter of both vouchers and the faith-based initiative added, "Blaine represented well a generation that embraced a myth of educational neutrality, the idea that school subjects could be taught without any reference to God."

   ¶       Fueling the fears of some Protestants and the legitimate concerns of state-church separationists, the Roman Catholic Church continued to display a provocative, hostile position toward the embargo of public money to support sectarian education. Pope Pius IX, for instance, in 1864 issued his "Syllabus of Errors" which condemned the notion that "The Church should be separated from the State and the State from the Church." Fearing the influence of secular education on children, the Vatican also embarked on an aggressive effort to form its own school system -- one where, as Pope Pius XI would later write, "the Catholic religion permeates the entire atmosphere and where all teaching and the whole organization of the school and its teachers, syllabus, and textbooks in every branch is regulated by the Christian spirit..."

   Despite the distortion of history and their argument that public entitlesments to religious groups "levels the playing field" for sectarian schools, opponents of the Blaine Amendment still face an uphill fight. Only one state, Louisiana, has removed its amendment. Voters in Massachusetts have rejected calls to weaken their state-church protections on two occasions, while in California 70% voted against vouchers. A similar proposal in Michigan was rejected by a 69%-31% margin.

   In addition to promoting vouchers as a form of "fairness" to religious sects, organizations like the Beckett Fund are working to find ways to challenge the "Blaine Amendments" in court. A panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court, for instance, ruled as impermissible a Washington State decision to deny a public scholarship to a student who was studying to become a pastor at a religious school. The U.S. Supreme Court seems to be taking an "accommodationist" position as well, reflecting the opinion of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist who opined in the ZELMAN case that the Ohio voucher program was, incredibly, "neutral with respect to religion."

   Justice Clarence Thomas has added his voice to the Blaine Amendments' opposition, opining that "nothing in the establishment clause requires the exclusion of pervasively sectarian schools from otherwise permissible aid programs." And Justice Anthony Kennedy has referred to the amendments, insisting: "Hostility of aid to pervasively sectarian schools has a shameful pedigree that we do not hesitate to disavow ... this doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried now."

   Far from being rooted in "bigotry," though, the constitutional amendment offered by James Blaine, and the subsequent state amendments banning public subsidies for sectarian education, reflected a secularist principle which was, and remains, under constant attack by various ecclesiastical groups. Protestants and Catholics were literally fighting in the streets, each trying to impose a religious dogma on the public educational system. The goal of having a free and universal school system open to all, one absent of sectarian indoctrination, was under fierce attack. It remains so today.

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