Jewish groups were split over two cases heard this week by the U.S. Supreme Court with important ramifications for church-state relations and free-speech protection.
One case, Zobrest vs. Catalina Foothills School District, deals with whether or not a deaf high school student who attends parochial school can have a sign language interpreter paid for with public funds.
In the other case, Lamb’s Chapel vs. Center Moriches Union Free School District, the justices must rule on whether an evangelical church group can use a public school, after school hours, to show a movie with a Christian theme.
Both of these cases, argued Wednesday before the court, could have repercussions in the Jewish community, and Jewish groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs and taken a strong interest in their outcomes.
The oral arguments were often lively and were punctuated by laughter from those viewing the proceedings.
James Zobrest, the deaf student, was in the audience, and the court, for the first time, had a sign-language interpreter present.
Zobrest’s attorney, William Ball, argued that an interpreter was a “window of communication” who would be conveying religious messages, but would not have the authority of a teacher.
He dismissed arguments that the interpreter would be seen by other children in the class as symbolizing a church-state union.
John Richardson, arguing for the school district, said the district could provide services for the student, unlike this service, that were not involved in “religious indoctrination.”
The American Jewish Congress, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and several Orthodox groups are siding with the student in the Zobrest case, arguing that the use of public funds to pay for an interpreter in a parochial school would not infringe on the wall separating church and state.
ORTHODOX GROUPS SUPPORT STUDENT
Abba Cohen, director of the Washington office of Agudath Israel, an Orthodox group, said that the student and his family are being placed in an “unfortunate position,” in which they are in effect being asked to choose between giving up a religious education or giving up state aid.
Nathan Lewin, a Washington attorney who serves as vice president of COLPA, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, which represents the interests of observant Jews in courts and legislatures, said that the brief filed by his group in the case asked the court to go further than the petitioner’s brief.
COLPA, Lewin said, asked the court to re-examine past cases that denied aid to handicapped children on parochial school premises.
On the other side, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League filed briefs saying that the presence of a public employee in a parochial school, interpreting information that could include some religious content, would violate the clause of the First Amendment prohibiting government “establishment of religion.”
“What we are saying,” said Michael Lieberman, associate director and counsel of ADL’s Washington office, “is that we have a situation with a public employee inside a pervasively sectarian institution.”
The Zobrest case is just “one more skirmish in an unrelenting war” to have “public funding in non-public schools,” said Samuel Rabinove, AJ-Committee’s legal director.
AJCommittee, Rabinove said, “believes that public funds should go to public schools only.” Otherwise, he added, American education could become fragmented, with each group using “public tax dollars for their own schools.”
Lower courts have ruled in favor of the school district.
In the Lamb’s Chapel case, the Jewish community is again split.
The evangelical church involved in the case lost its suit in federal district court and on appeal, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that a school building is not an open public forum, so that excluding religious groups does not violate the Constitution.
A ‘LIMITED PUBLIC FORUM?’
The case involves free speech issues as well as church-state concerns.
It centers in part around whether a public school after teaching hours is a “limited public forum.”
The legal definition of a limited public forum includes the forum’s right to limit the type of speech expressed within it, based on the speech’s content. For example, all religious speech or political speech could be prohibited.
In oral arguments. Wednesday, the Lamb’s Chapel attorney, Jay Alan Sekulow, argued that religious speech such as that in the Lamb’s Chapel film provides a civic benefit to the public, and that was what was mandated by the school’s policy of who was allowed to use the facilities.
Justice John Paul Stevens asked how Sekulow would respond if a religious group advocated marijuana smoking.
After Sekulow said the group should be allowed, Justice Byron White judiciously pointed out that smoking marijuana was against the law.
The ADL filed a brief in the case on the side of the school district, as it did in the Zobrest case. “Our brief asserted that the school district does have the right to make a decision on who can use the facilities,” Lieberman said.
On the other side were the Orthodox groups, who argued that the religious group should be allowed to use the facilities after school hours.
“There’s no reason why” religious groups “should not have the rights other groups have,” Agudath Israel’s Cohen said.
Lewin of COLPA said that his group took the free-speech issues inherent in the case into account, as well as the church-state issues.
“It would be a violation of the First Amendment to exclude religious speech or any religious access from public premises when no school is going on, and no kids are around,” Lewin explained.
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center, said that the Reform movement’s position was that the school should be able to rent its facility to religious groups.
“To do this at a time when no students are around, and to disallow only religious groups, is to discriminate against religion,” Saperstein emphasized.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
