Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township
Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township was a landmark Supreme Court case that addressed the boundaries of the establishment clause of the First Amendment as it applies to state governments. The case arose when Arch Everson, a taxpayer, challenged a New Jersey law that reimbursed parents for bus transportation costs to both public and parochial schools. Everson argued that this practice violated the separation of church and state by effectively supporting religious education.
The Supreme Court's decision, delivered by Justice Hugo L. Black in a 5-4 ruling, concluded that the establishment clause indeed applied to the states and emphasized the need for government neutrality in religious matters. While all justices agreed on the principle of neutrality, they differed on its application in this case. The majority held that providing transportation reimbursement did not equate to government support of religion, as it was a benefit available to all parents regardless of the school type. In contrast, the dissenting justices contended that the law indirectly supported a religious institution by favoring parents of children in parochial schools.
Ultimately, Everson v. Board of Education established important precedents regarding the relationship between government and religion, reinforcing the idea that neither level of government should favor or support religious institutions financially. The case remains significant in discussions about church-state separation and educational funding in the United States.
Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township
Date: February 10, 1947
Citation: 330 U.S. 1
Issue: Establishment of religion
Significance: The Supreme Court upheld bus fare reimbursements for private school students in the first case to use the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the First Amendment’s establishment of religion clause to the states.
Justice Hugo L. Black wrote the 5-4 opinion for the Supreme Court; Justices Robert H. Jackson, Felix Frankfurter, Wiley B. Rutledge, Jr., and Harold H. Burton dissented. On one level, all nine justices agreed that the establishment of religion clause applied to the states and that government should be neutral with respect to religion, neither aiding nor obstructing it. The disagreement was over whether the principle of neutrality toward religion was properly applied in this case.
New Jersey law authorized school boards to reimburse parents for the cost of bus transportation to attend school, whether public or parochial. Arch Everson was a local taxpayer in Ewing township who believed this violated the establishment clause. The four dissenting justices agreed with him, but the majority on the Court believed bus fare payment was remote from any religious purpose. They believed that the money for bus transportation would have been paid to all parents regardless of the kind of school their children attended. Depriving Roman Catholic parents of the payments forced them to pay taxes to support the transportation of other children while not receiving the benefit themselves. The larger point of this case was to establish that neither the state nor the federal government could support a religious institution, and on that point, all agreed.