Agostini v. Felton
521 U.S. 203 (1997)
by
Stonleigh Caswell

Facts of the Case  

After the decision handed down in Aguilar v. Felton in 1985, public school teachers were not allowed to provide remedial education for economically disadvantaged parochial school students who received Title I benefits on school grounds.  The court ruled that placing public employees on the premises of parochial schools resulted in “excessive entanglement” between church and state because of the amount of monitoring it took to ensure that public teachers were not inculcating religion.  For this reason, on-campus remedial instruction by public employees of parochial students failed the third clause of the Lemon test and therefore violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.  In Agostini v. Felton, the New York parochial school board and some of the students’ parents fought this decision.  They stated three reasons for the reconsideration of the Aguilar decision. First, the facts of the case had changed because of the significant costs of providing off-campus sites.  They said that this provided just cause for reconsideration because a change in factual conditions can grant relief from a final decision under Rule 60(b)(5).  Second, in the case Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School v. Grumet five of the justices on the Supreme Court had asked for the decision in Aguilar to be reconsidered or overturned.  Third, the decision in Aguilar was no longer valid because the decision had been undermined by the decisions in Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind and Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District.

Decision of the Court

The court denied the first two charges, but it affirmed the third charge.  Therefore, on-site Title I benefits were not “excessive entanglement” and did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Basis for the Decision

The Agostini court said that the results of the two cases had overturned the ideologies presented in the Aguilar case, and thus allowing public employees to provide Title I benefits at parochial schools was not a violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. In Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District the court allowed a deaf student to have a state employed sign language interpreter in his parochial school with him. The principles of the Zobrest decision that undermined the Aguilar decision were that there was no evidence that a state employee would not dutifully go about their job and that state employees on parochial grounds were not a symbolic link between church and state.  The Agostini court also said that it proved that sectarian schools did not provide remedial education. Thus, Title I benefits did not relieve parochial schools of expenditures normally used for remedial education, and therefore more money would not be given to the advancement of religion.  In Witters v Washington Department of Services for the Blind, a blind man was granted a state-sponsored scholarship that he used to attend a Christian college.  The principle of the Witters decision that helped overturned the Aguilar decision was that money that went to a religious institution was the choice of the individual, not the state.  The Agostini court also concluded that cooperation and political divisiveness do not constitute excessive entanglement because it occurs in all institutions where Title I services are offered.