Supreme Court Rules Against State Money for Theology Students
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
February 25, 2004
(AgapePress) - The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a major blow to Christian students who major in theology at public universities.The justices say states may withhold scholarships from students who are studying theology -- even if they make that same money available to students who are studying something else. By a 7-2 vote, the justices said the State of Washington is within its rights in refusing to give a taxpayer-funded scholarship to Joshua Davey, who was studying to be a minister.
Writing for the majority in Locke v. Davey, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said: "Training someone to lead a congregation is an essentially religious endeavor. Indeed, majoring in devotional theology is akin to a religious calling as well as an academic pursuit."
The two dissenting justices were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia had contended that because the Promise Scholarship Program -- the program under which Davey had been awarded the scholarship -- funds training for all secular professions, the state must also fund training for religious professions.
"When the public's freedom of conscience is invoked to justify denial of equal treatment, benevolent motives shade into indifference and ultimately into repression," Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion.
But Rehnquist said that without a presumption of unconstitutionality, Davey's claim must fail. "The State's interest in not funding the pursuit of devotional degrees is substantial and the exclusion of such funding places a relatively minor burden on Promise Scholars," the chief justice wrote.
Brian Fahling | |
Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney with the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, says the lopsided ruling is disturbing and has caught everyone by surprise."This one really is a departure from an emerging basis of precedent that really did allow citizens to utilize government money that they had received for the purposes they chose," Fahling says. "The whole idea is that it's not the government that's making that decision, it's the individual; and they are simply being treated equally and not discriminated against because they choose to utilize the funding for religious education."
Fahling believes the decision will have negative repercussions for Christian students across the U.S. "I think that this decision will lead to more states being restrictive about the use of their money," the attorney explains.
The AFA attorney agrees with Justices Thomas and Scalia, who said Joshua Davey's treatment amounted to "discrimination against a religious minority."
"There seems to be a good deal of momentum in the direction of discrimination against Christians in the public sector," Fahling says, "and I think that this ruling will certainly embolden those states; and there are many states out there that didn't have the type of rule that the State of Washington had prohibiting the use of money [to study theology]."
Chief Justice Rehnquist has traditionally been favorable to allowing church-based groups to compete for government money.
