Дело Zelman v. Simmons Harris: Школьные ваучеры и Первая поправка к Конституции США

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. The decision was said to be "the most important ruling on religion and the schools in the 40 years since the court declared organized prayer in the public schools to be unconstitutional" by Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times. Then president George W. Bush said the case was "just as historic" as Brown v. Board of Education. The Wall Street Journal editorial page said, "The U. S. Supreme Court yesterday struck the great blow for equal public education since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In the process, it also stripped away the last Constitutional and moral fig leaf from those who want to keep minority kids trapped in failing public schools." Ohio had been running the program, which allowed parents of qualified students in the Cleveland School District, from the 1996–97 school year, to use public money to pay for tuition at private schools in the program, which included religious schools. Of the 56 private schools that participated in the program, 46 were sectarian. The program aimed to improve the low educational performance of the students in the school district. The program provided tuition vouchers for up to $2,250 a year to some parents of students in the school district to attend participating public or private schools in the city and neighboring suburbs. The program also allocated tutorial aid for students who remained in public schools. At the time the case was heard, approximately 4,000 of Cleveland's 57,000 elementary age public school pupils took part in the program. Simmons Harris, along with other residents of the Cleveland area, argued that the government "could not pay tuition for students to attend religious school". The First Amendment comes into play because the taxpayers of Ohio said that the program was a violation of the Establishment Clause, one of the two clauses of the First Amendment. The Establishment Clause guarantees freedom of religion and strictly prohibits the government from passing any legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another; it thus enforces the "separation of church and state."

Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the majority opinion, which held that the school voucher program was not in violation of the Establishment Clause. The ruling also determined that government support for religion is constitutional if it does not occur de jure but de facto, and if the use of religious facilities is neither specified nor encouraged. Cleveland's program was declared to be religiously neutral and to be giving parents the benefit of true private choice. Rehnquist's decision determined that the program in question aimed at secular assistance for the poor, low performing children, who would otherwise have no options in a failing school district. He wrote in the decision that the program had been "enacted for the valid secular purpose of providing educational assistance to poor children in a demonstrably failing public school system." In determining whether the school voucher program encouraged or inhibited religion directly, the court noted that whether the aid went to parents or to private schools was a relevant factor in how it ruled. According to the precedent set by Mueller v. Allen (1983), aid can constitutionally be given to parents but not to schools. The Court found that because the aid went to parents, who then determined how to spend it, the program did not violate the Establishment Clause.

Justice Stevens and Justice Souter wrote separate dissenting opinions.

Justice Stevens's dissenting opinion focused on the method by which the majority reached its conclusions. In his view, the Court "should ignore three factual matters that are discussed at length." Specifically, he argued that the Court should not consider the severe educational crisis that confronted the school district when Ohio enacted its voucher program, the wide range of choices that have been made available to students within the public school system, or the voluntary character of the private choice to prefer a private religious education over a public secular education.

At the time Zelman was decided, many state constitutions included so called Blaine Amendments, which specifically forbid state funding of religious and/or sectarian education. As a question of state, not federal, law, Ohio's Blaine Amendment was not considered by federal courts in the case. Florida's Opportunity Scholarship voucher program was ruled unconstitutional on Blaine grounds in a split 8 5 First District Court of Appeal ruling two years after Zelman in November 2004. The issue was argued before the Florida Supreme Court in 2005, with voucher advocates hoping to take the case to the U. S. Supreme Court in an effort to invalidate Blaine Amendments nationwide, following the Zelman decision. However, the Florida Supreme Court sidestepped the issue and declared the program unconstitutional on separate grounds in an effort to avoid U. S. Supreme Court scrutiny. On June 30, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that Montana's no aid provision in its constitution, a Blaine amendment, had been inappropriately used to block tax credit scholarship funds for private schooling for being used at a religious school in violation of the Free Exercise Clause. The ruling effectively stated that if the state offered public scholarship funds for a private school, they could not discriminate against religious schools. It was expected that states with similar programs with no aid provisions in their constitutions would be forced to re evaluate any program restrictions.