October 20, 1999

Court rejects 4 church-state cases
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped four church-state disputes during the opening weeks of its 1999-2000 term.
___Without comment, justices refused to review:
___ The invalidation by New York's top court of a public-school district created to provide special education for the Hasidic Jewish community of Kiryas Joel.
___ Lower-court rulings that Maine properly refused to pay tuition at parochial schools for students living in rural areas not served by public schools.
___ Lower court rulings upholding Arizona's tax credit for contributions to religious school scholarship funds.
___ The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's refusal to reinstate a law exempting the sale of religious publications and other religious articles from the state sales tax.
___The high court's rejection of these disputes, along with four other cases when it opened its new term Oct. 4, continued a trend of steering clear of church-state disputes.
___To date, only one church-state case is scheduled for review by the Supreme Court this term. On Dec. 1, justices will hear a request by New Orleans education officials to reinstate a federal funding program used to provide computers and other educational equipment to parochial schools.
___Last summer, the high court appeared to signal an interest in the Kiryas Joel case when it stayed the ruling invalidating the special school district. But only three justices--Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas--voted to hear the case, one short of the four votes needed to grant review.
___New York lawmakers first created the district in 1989 after efforts to provide special-education services for disabled Satmar Hasidic students in existing public schools proved unsatisfactory to the community.
___The special district was challenged in court and struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994 because it singled out a religious community for special treatment. At issue before the high court this time was New York's third try at creating the Kiryas Joel school district.
___New York's top court rejected claims that the legislature had this time enacted a "religion-neutral" law.
___"The non-neutral effect of the statute is to secure for one religious community a unique and significant benefit--a 'public school' where all students adhere to the tenets of a particular religion--unavailable to all other similarly situated communities," the New York court said.
___At issue in the Maine dispute is the state's exclusion of religious schools from a program that provides private-school tuition for students residing in areas not served by public schools.
___The ban on paying tuition to religious schools was challenged in state and federal courts. In the Oct. 11 order, the high court left standing rulings by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the ban.
___The Arizona case marks the second time in a year the justices have refused to consider a challenge to a state's education-choice program. Last November, the high court also declined a challenge to Wisconsin's school-choice program
___At issue in the Pennsylvania case is a 1971 state law that exempts from sales tax "religious publications sold by religious groups and Bibles and religious articles."
___Pennsylvania's highest court said that because the statute exempts only religious publications and articles, it provides the same "preference for communication of religious messages" that the nation's high court struck down in a 1989 Texas case.

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