Mueller v. Allen

Last updated

Mueller v. Allen
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 18, 1983
Decided June 29, 1983
Full case nameMueller v. Allen
Citations463 U.S. 388 ( more )
103 S. Ct. 3062; 77 L. Ed. 2d 721; 1983 U.S. LEXIS 96
Argument Oral argument
Case history
Prior514 F. Supp. 998 (D. Minn. 1981); affirmed, 676 F.2d 1195 (8th Cir. 1982); cert. granted, 459 U.S. 820(1982).
Holding
A state income tax deduction that is available for expenses incurred in sending children to both public and private schools does not violate the Establishment Clause even if it can be used for religious schools.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices
William J. Brennan Jr.  · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall  · Harry Blackmun
Lewis F. Powell Jr.  · William Rehnquist
John P. Stevens  · Sandra Day O'Connor
Case opinions
MajorityRehnquist, joined by Burger, White, Powell, O'Connor
DissentMarshall, joined by Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens
Laws applied
First Amendment

Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388 (1983), was a United States Supreme Court case examining the constitutionality of a state tax deduction granted to taxpaying parents for school-related expenses, including expenses incurred from private secular and religious schools. The plaintiffs claimed that a Minnesota statute, allowing tax deductions for both public and private school expenses, had the effect of subsidizing religious instruction since parents who paid tuition to religious schools received a larger deduction than parents of public school students, who incurred no tuition expenses.

Contents

In a 5–4 decision, the Court upheld the statute. [1] The majority affirmed that the benefit was religiously neutral because the deduction applied equally to sectarian and nonsectarian tuition and that the choice of religious or nonreligious instruction was made by individual parents, not the state. Also, aid was given to parents, not schools.

The dissenting opinion argued that the tax deduction violated the US Constitution because it was an indirect government subsidy of religion, providing a financial incentive to parents to send their children to religious schools.

Background

The First Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits laws advancing the establishment of any religion. Any government-sponsored religious instruction is thus barred. Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court's reviews of First Amendment disputes were minimal because the court maintained jurisdiction to consider only challenges against laws passed at the federal level.

Everson v. Board of Education (1947) was the first case decided by the Court to apply the Establishment Clause prohibition to state laws. [2] The decision in Everson established two criteria to judge state legislation: the action must have a secular purpose, and that purpose must be the primary effect of the action. Following a 1971 decision by the Supreme Court, a third condition was incorporated. The resulting three-pronged test, called Lemon test, prescribes that for any governmental policy or legislation to satisfy the Establishment Clause, it must have a secular purpose, its primary effect must not the advancement or inhibition of religion, and it must not create an excessive entanglement between religion and government. [3]

In Mueller, the plaintiff claimed that the primary effect of the Minnesota law was the advancement of religion since most taxpayers who benefited from the legislation were parents paying their children's tuition to private religious schools.

Majority opinion

Justice Rehnquist delivered the majority opinion, which affirmed the decisions of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota [4] and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit [5] that the Minnesota statute (§ 290.09, subd. 22) was constitutional. The law allowed state taxpayers to a state income tax deduction for any expenses toward their children's school tuition, textbooks, and transportation. The deduction was limited to $500 per student in elementary school and $700 per student in middle school and high school. The statute excluded deducting any expenses for "instructional books and materials used in the teaching of religious tenets, doctrines or worship, the purpose of which is to inculcate such tenets, doctrines or worship."

The plaintiffs were unsuccessful in contending that the tax deduction provided financial assistance to religious schools and that to assure no deduction was made for textbooks containing religious teachings, the state became excessively entangled with religion.

Rehnquist noted that the statute was facially neutral on religion and rejected the plaintiff's argument that its religious partiality was evidenced by the fact that 96% of the private schools in Minnesota were sectarian institutions.

Dissenting opinion

Justice Marshall wrote the dissenting opinion, agreed to by three other justices. The tax credits were available to all parents, but, in practice, the chief benefit went to parents whose children attended parochial schools. "Parents who send their children to free public schools are simply ineligible to obtain the full benefit of the deduction except in the unlikely event that they buy $700 worth of pencils, notebooks, and bus rides for their children." As the First Amendment was concerned, Marshall added, a tax credit did not differ from a direct grant to parents, which had already been found unconstitutional.

Aftermath

Mueller v. Allen marked a turning point for the Establishment Clause, and for the next 20 years the Supreme Court ruled more favorably if governments fostered aid. The Court upheld benefits that were deemed to be religiously neutral and were extended to all equally, even if they were favorable to individuals in exercising their privately-held religious interests. The Court became disinclined to overturn laws that did not disqualify religiously based interests if the direct beneficiaries of the legislation in question were individuals, rather than religiously-affiliated institutions. [3]

Following Mueller, private choice was a key element extended to subsequent Establishment Clause court decisions over government sponsored school vouchers, the most significant one being Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002). While direct aid was funneled instead to religious schools, the Court focused instead on whether or not the policies at issue provided sufficient controls to ensure the assistance was not directed to religious instruction and that the policies did not lead to forbidden entanglements between the government and any religious institution. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of teaching creationism. The Court considered a Louisiana law requiring that where evolutionary science was taught in public schools, creation science must also be taught. The constitutionality of the law was successfully challenged in District Court, Aguillard v. Treen, 634 F. Supp. 426, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, Aguillard v. Edwards, 765 F.2d 1251. The United States Supreme Court ruled that this law violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion. In its decision, the court opined that "teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction."

Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. The court ruled in an 8–0 decision that Pennsylvania's Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act from 1968 was unconstitutional and in an 8–1 decision that Rhode Island's 1969 Salary Supplement Act was unconstitutional, violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The act allowed the Superintendent of Public Schools to reimburse private schools for the salaries of teachers who taught in these private elementary schools from public textbooks and with public instructional materials.

Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided 8–1 in favor of the respondent, Edward Schempp, on behalf of his son Ellery Schempp, and declared that school-sponsored Bible reading and the recitation of the Lord's Prayer in public schools in the United States was unconstitutional.

Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools, due to violation of the First Amendment. The ruling has been the subject of intense debate.

"Separation of church and state" is a metaphor paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson and used by others in discussions of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that applied the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to state law. Before this decision, the clause, which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", restricted only the federal government, while many states continued to grant certain religious denominations legislative or effective privileges.

In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

The Free Exercise Clause accompanies the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), was a 5–4 decision of the United States Supreme Court that upheld an Ohio program that used school vouchers. The Court decided that the program did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as long as parents using the program were allowed to choose among a range of secular and religious schools.

Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940), is a landmark court decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment's federal protection of religious free exercise incorporates via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and so applies to state governments too.

DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the standing of taxpayers to challenge state tax laws in federal court. The Court unanimously ruled that state taxpayers did not have standing under Article III of the United States Constitution to challenge state tax or spending decisions simply by virtue of their status as taxpayers. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the majority opinion, which was joined by all of the justices except for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who concurred separately.

Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment required the government to demonstrate both a compelling interest and that the law in question was narrowly tailored before it denied unemployment compensation to someone who was fired because her job requirements substantially conflicted with her religion.

Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599 (1961), was a landmark case on the issue of religious and economic liberty decided by the United States Supreme Court. In a 6–3 decision, the Court held that a Pennsylvania blue law forbidding the sale of various retail products on Sunday was not an unconstitutional interference with religion as described in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819 (1995), was an opinion by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding whether a state university might, consistent with the First Amendment, withhold from student religious publications funding provided to similar secular student publications. The University of Virginia provided funding to every student organization that met funding-eligibility criteria, which Wide Awake, the student religious publication, fulfilled. The University's defense claimed that denying student activity funding to the religious magazine was necessary to avoid the University's violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, 551 U.S. 587 (2007), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court which ruled that taxpayers do not have the right to challenge the constitutionality of expenditures by the executive branch of the government. The issue was whether taxpayers have the right to challenge the existence of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The case centered on three Supreme Court precedents: Flast v. Cohen, Bowen v. Kendrick, and Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State.

Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Adolescent Family Life Act.

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a Missouri program that denied a grant to a religious school for playground resurfacing, while providing grants to similarly situated non-religious groups, violated the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, 591 U.S. 464 (2020), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a state-based scholarship program that provides public funds to allow students to attend private schools cannot discriminate against religious schools under the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution.

Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756 (1973), was a United States Supreme Court case which held New York state policies providing repair and maintenance grants to non-public schools, and tuition reimbursement or tax credits to parents of students were Establishment Clause violations. The Court found that the three New York State programs failed the primary effect prong of the Lemon test.

Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court case holding that one-time construction grants to religious colleges and universities under Title I of the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 do not violate the Establishment or Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment. Applying the effect prong of the Lemon test, the Court severs and strikes down one provision of the Act that limited enforcement of secular use restrictions to a 20-year period.

References

  1. ↑ Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388 (1983). PD-icon.svg This article incorporates public domain material from judicial opinions or other documents created by the federal judiciary of the United States.
  2. ↑ Gedicks, Frederick Mark (2005). "Religion". In Kermit L. Hall (ed.). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (2nd ed.). Oxford. p. 837. ISBN   9780195176612.
  3. 1 2 Paul Finkelman, ed. (2006). "Mueller v. Allen". Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties. Vol. 1. CRC Press. p. 1045. ISBN   9780415943420.
  4. ↑ Mueller v. Allen, 514F. Supp.998 (D. Minn.1981).
  5. ↑ Mueller v. Allen, 676F.2d1195 (8th Cir.1982).
  6. ↑ Gedicks, Frederick Mark (2005). "Religion". In Kermit L. Hall (ed.). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (2nd ed.). Oxford. p. 839. ISBN   9780195176612.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.