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High Court Upholds State's Withdrawal of Religion Major's Scholarship

by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
February 26, 2004
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(AgapePress) - The Christian student at the center of the Supreme Court's ruling on divinity scholarships is expressing disappointment with the lopsided decision.

Yesterday the High Court voted 7-2 to let states withhold scholarships from students studying theology. It held that the State of Washington was within its rights to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to college student Joshua Davey, who was studying to be a minister at Northwest College in Kirkland, Washington.

 
Joshua Davey
Davey was awarded the state's Promise Scholarship, which was based on academic excellence and financial need, only to have it withdrawn after he declared a double major in Pastoral Ministries and Business Management. Washington state officials said the scholarship funds could not go to a student pursuing a degree in religious studies taught from a religious perspective.

In 2002 the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a district court ruling and declared that the State of Washington had unconstitutionally and "impermissibly" deprived the student of his scholarship. However, the ruling by the Supreme Court overturned that finding, with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissenting. (See Earlier Story)

Davey believes the Supreme Court's majority ruling runs contrary to the court's own precedents and sends a very negative message to the states. "The court here today has sanctioned this kind of discrimination," he says, "and if states decide they want to have these sorts of laws, then apparently they're free to do so."

But Davey says he hopes the contrary will prove true, and instead "that people would be mobilized by this decision and recognize the discrimination that's going on here, and work within their own home states to change the laws and to ensure that this isn't going on."

The former Northwest College student considers the Supreme Court's decision in his case to be just further evidence of the growing secular bias in America's judicial system. But Davey, who is now pursuing a law degree at Harvard Law School, says he will not let one setback discourage him from fighting other important religious freedom battles.

Explanations and Implications
Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Davey in the case. He says his public interest law firm is "very disappointed" with the ruling, and he is troubled by the court's inconsistency.

"It is troubling that the decision is irreconcilable with more than a half century of Supreme Court precedent regarding the free exercise of religion," the chief counsel says. "In this case, Josh Davey simply wanted to be treated equally on the same terms and conditions as other scholarship recipients."

Sekulow, who presented oral arguments before the Supreme Court in December, says the justices "missed an important opportunity to protect the constitutional rights of all students."

Although the ruling is disappointing to many religious freedom advocates, some are quick to point out that the very narrow ruling is not a green light for states to discriminate against religious scholars. The court specifically held in Locke v. Davey that a state may refuse to fund clergy training if its own constitution prohibits such funding.

Gregory Baylor is director of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom, which filed a "friend of the court" brief urging the Court to strike down Washington's statute. As Baylor explains, "The decision imposes no new limits on government funding of religious education. It merely allows Washington and 12 other states to decline to fund clergy training."

Other observers have raised concerns that the Supreme Court's decision in Davey's case might have even broader implications related to policies governing school vouchers and faith-based initiatives. It has been pointed out that in some ways the ruling is a reversal of the voucher argument, suggesting that a religious education is necessarily ineligible for state funding.

However, according to the Associated Press, the White House is downplaying the impact of the ruling. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says the outcome of the case will not impede President Bush's faith-based initiative program since the court's ruling "is very narrow and applies only at the state level."

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