The bill signed into law Tuesday by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, which will provide textbooks to children in both public and religious schools in the state, is virtually certain to be challenged on the basis of a constitutional provision barring the use of public funds “directly or indirectly” to aid sectarian schools, it was predicted here today. An estimated 35, 000 pupils in Jewish schools in New York City are expected to benefit from the new law.
Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz disclosed today that he had warned the Governor that there were serious questions about the constitutionality of the new law, which becomes effective September 1, 1966. Jewish organizations, mostly Orthodox, have endorsed the bill and the parallel federal aid law. The American Jewish Congress has criticized the law as breaching the church-state separation principle.
(The New York Times today criticized the new bill for the second time in an editorial urging that a court test be held. “If this law is constitutional,” the editorial declared, “the State Constitution does not mean what it appears to say.” Similar editorials appeared in the New York Post and New York World Telegram and Sun. The Journal-American, however, published an editorial favoring the newly enacted measure.)
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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.
