U.S. Supreme Court Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) Everson v. Board of Education of the
Township of Ewing No. 52 Argued November 20,
1946 Decided February 10,
1947 330 U.S.
1 APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF ERRORS AND
APPEALS OF NEW JERSEY Syllabus Pursuant to a New Jersey statute authorizing district boards of
education to make rules and contracts for the transportation of
children to and from schools other than private schools operated
for profit, a board of education by resolution authorized the
reimbursement of parents for fares paid for the transportation by
public carrier of children attending public and Catholic schools.
The Catholic schools operated under the superintendency of a
Catholic priest and, in addition to secular education, gave
religious instruction in the Catholic Faith. A district taxpayer
challenged the validity under the Federal Constitution of the
statute and resolution so far as they authorized reimbursement to
parents for the transportation of children attending sectarian
schools. No question was raised as to whether the exclusion of
private schools operated for profit denied equal protection of the
laws; nor did the record show that there were any children in the
district who attended, or would have attended but for the cost of
transportation, any but public or Catholic schools. Held: 1. The expenditure of tax raised funds thus authorized was for a
public purpose, and did not violate the due process clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 330 U. S. 5 -8.

															2. The statute and resolution did not violate the provision of
the First Amendment (made applicable to the states by the
Fourteenth Amendment) prohibiting any "law respecting an
establishment of religion." Pp. 330 U. S.
8 -18.

															133 N.J.L. 350, 44 A.2d 333, affirmed. Page 330 U. S. 2 In a suit by a taxpayer, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that
the state legislature was without power under the state
constitution to authorize reimbursement to parents of bus fares
paid for transporting their children to schools other than public
schools. 132 N.J.L. 98, 39 A.2d 75. The New Jersey Court of Errors
and Appeals reversed, holding that neither the statute nor a
resolution passed pursuant to it violated the state constitution or
the provisions of the Federal Constitution in issue. 133 N.J.L.
350, 44 A.2d 333. On appeal of the federal questions to this Court, affirmed, p. 330 U. S. 18 . Page 330 U. S. 3 MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

															A New Jersey statute authorizes its local school districts to
make rules and contracts for the transportation of children to and
from schools. [ Footnote 1 ] The
appellee, a township board of education, acting pursuant to this
statute, authorized reimbursement to parents of money expended by
them for the bus transportation of their children on regular busses
operated by the public transportation system. Part of this money
was for the payment of transportation of some children in the
community to Catholic parochial schools. These church schools give
their students, in addition to secular education, regular religious
instruction conforming to the religious tenets and modes of worship
of the Catholic Faith. The superintendent of these schools is a
Catholic priest.

															The appellant, in his capacity as a district taxpayer, filed
suit in a state court challenging the right of the Board to
reimburse parents of parochial school students. He Page 330 U. S. 4 contended that the statute and the resolution passed pursuant to
it violated both the State and the Federal Constitutions. That
court held that the legislature was without power to authorize such
payment under the state constitution. 132 N.J.L. 98, 39 A.2d 75.
The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals reversed, holding that
neither the statute nor the resolution passed pursuant to it was in
conflict with the State constitution or the provisions of the
Federal Constitution in issue. 133 N.J.L. 350, 44 A.2d 333. The
case is here on appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 344(a).

															Since there has been no attack on the statute on the ground that
a part of its language excludes children attending private schools
operated for profit from enjoying State payment for their
transportation, we need not consider this exclusionary language; it
has no relevancy to any constitutional question here presented.
[ Footnote 2 ] Furthermore, if
the exclusion clause had been properly challenged, we do not know
whether New Jersey's highest court would construe its statutes as
precluding payment of the school Page 330 U. S. 5 transportation of any group of pupils, even those of a private
school run for profit. [ Footnote
3 ] Consequently, we put to one side the question as to the
validity of the statute against the claim that it does not
authorize payment for the transportation generally of school
children in New Jersey.

															The only contention here is that the state statute and the
resolution, insofar as they authorized reimbursement to parents of
children attending parochial schools, violate the Federal
Constitution in these two respects, which to some extent overlap. First. They authorize the State to take by taxation the
private property of some and bestow it upon others to be used for
their own private purposes. This, it is alleged, violates the due
process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second. The
statute and the resolution forced inhabitants to pay taxes to help
support and maintain schools which are dedicated to, and which
regularly teach, the Catholic Faith. This is alleged to be a use of
state power to support church schools contrary to the prohibition
of the First Amendment which the Fourteenth Amendment made
applicable to the states. First. The due process argument that the state law
taxes some people to help others carry out their private Page 330 U. S. 6 purposes is framed in two phases. The first phase is that a
state cannot tax A to reimburse B for the cost of transporting his
children to church schools. This is said to violate the due process
clause because the children are sent to these church schools to
satisfy the personal desires of their parents, rather than the
public's interest in the general education of all children. This
argument, if valid, would apply equally to prohibit state payment
for the transportation of children to any nonpublic school, whether
operated by a church or any other nongovernment individual or
group. But the New Jersey legislature has decided that a public
purpose will be served by using tax raised funds to pay the bus
fares of all school children, including those who attend parochial
schools. The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals has reached the
same conclusion. The fact that a state law, passed to satisfy a
public need, coincides with the personal desires of the individuals
most directly affected is certainly an inadequate reason for us to
say that a legislature has erroneously appraised the public
need.

															It is true that this Court has, in rare instances, struck down
state statutes on the ground that the purpose for which tax raised
funds were to be expended was not a public one. Loan
Association v. Topeka , 20 Wall. 655; Parkersburg v. Brown, 106 U. S. 487 ; Thompson v. Consolidated Gas Utilities Corp., 300 U. S.
55 . But the Court has also pointed out that this
far-reaching authority must be exercised with the most extreme
caution. Green v. Frazier, 253 U.
S. 233 , 253 U. S. 240 .
Otherwise, a state's power to legislate for the public welfare
might be seriously curtailed, a power which is a primary reason for
the existence of states. Changing local conditions create new local
problems which may lead a state's people and its local authorities
to believe that laws authorizing new types of public services are
necessary to promote the general wellbeing Page 330 U. S. 7 of the people. The Fourteenth Amendment did not strip the states
of their power to meet problems previously left for individual
solution. Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S.
97 , 96 U. S.
103 -104; Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U. S.
27 , 113 U. S. 31 -32; Fallbrook Irrigation District v. Bradley, 164 U.
S. 112 , 164 U. S.
157 -158.

															It is much too late to argue that legislation intended to
facilitate the opportunity of children to get a secular education
serves no public purpose. Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of
Education, 281 U. S. 370 ;
Holmes, J., in Interstate Ry. v. Massachusetts, 207 U. S. 79 , 207 U. S. 87 . See opinion of Cooley, J., in Stuart v. School
District No. 1 of Kalamazoo, 30 Mich. 69 (1874). The same
thing is no less true of legislation to reimburse needy parents, or
all parents, for payment of the fares of their children so that
they can ride in public busses to and from schools, rather than run
the risk of traffic and other hazards incident to walking or
"hitchhiking." See Barbier v. Connolly, supra, at 113 U. S. 31 . See also cases collected 63 A.L.R. 413; 118 A.L.R. 806.
Nor does it follow that a law has a private, rather than a public,
purpose because it provides that tax-raised funds will be paid to
reimburse individuals on account of money spent by them in a way
which furthers a public program. See Carmichael v. Southern
Coal & Coke Co., 301 U. S. 495 , 301 U. S. 518 .
Subsidies and loans to individuals such as farmers and home owners,
and to privately owned transportation systems, as well as many
other kinds of businesses, have been commonplace practices in our
state and national history.

															Insofar as the second phase of the due process argument may
differ from the first, it is by suggesting that taxation for
transportation of children to church schools constitutes support of
a religion by the State. But if the law is invalid for this reason,
it is because it violates the First Amendment's prohibition against
the establishment of religion Page 330 U. S. 8 by law. This is the exact question raised by appellant's second
contention, to consideration of which we now turn. Second. The New Jersey statute is challenged as a "law
respecting an establishment of religion." The First Amendment, as
made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth, Murdock v.
Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 ,
commands that a state "shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof. . . ." These words of the First Amendment reflected in the
minds of early Americans a vivid mental picture of conditions and
practices which they fervently wished to stamp out in order to
preserve liberty for themselves and for their posterity. Doubtless
their goal has not been entirely reached; but so far has the Nation
moved toward it that the expression "law respecting an
establishment of religion" probably does not so vividly remind
present-day Americans of the evils, fears, and political problems
that caused that expression to be written into our Bill of Rights.
Whether this New Jersey law is one respecting an "establishment of
religion" requires an understanding of the meaning of that
language, particularly with respect to the imposition of taxes.
Once again, [ Footnote 4 ]
therefore, it is not inappropriate briefly to review the background
and environment of the period in which that constitutional language
was fashioned and adopted.

															A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came
here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws which compelled them
to support and attend government-favored churches. The centuries
immediately before and contemporaneous with the colonization of
America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife and
persecutions, generated in large part by established sects
determined to Page 330 U. S. 9 maintain their absolute political and religious supremacy. With
the power of government supporting them, at various times and
places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had
persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other
Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted
Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from
time to time persecuted Jews. In efforts to force loyalty to
whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with
the government of a particular time and place, men and women had
been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed. Among the
offenses for which these punishments had been inflicted were such
things as speaking disrespectfully of the views of ministers of
government-established churches, non-attendance at those churches,
expressions of nonbelief in their doctrines, and failure to pay
taxes and tithes to support them. [ Footnote 5 ]

															These practices of the old world were transplanted to, and began
to thrive in, the soil of the new America. The very charters
granted by the English Crown to the individuals and companies
designated to make the laws which would control the destinies of
the colonials authorized these individuals and companies to erect
religious establishments which all, whether believers or
nonbelievers, would be required to support and attend. [ Footnote 6 ] An exercise of Page 330 U. S. 10 this authority was accompanied by a repetition of many of the
old-world practices and persecutions. Catholics found themselves
hounded and proscribed because of their faith; Quakers who followed
their conscience went to jail; Baptists were peculiarly obnoxious
to certain dominant Protestant sects; men and women of varied
faiths who happened to be in a minority in a particular locality
were persecuted because they steadfastly persisted in worshipping
God only as their own consciences dictated. [ Footnote 7 ] And all of these dissenters were
compelled to pay tithes and taxes [ Footnote 8 ] to support government-sponsored churches whose
ministers preached inflammatory sermons designed to strengthen and
consolidate the established faith by generating a burning hatred
against dissenters. Page 330 U. S. 11 These practices became so commonplace as to shock the
freedom-loving colonials into a feeling of abhorrence. [ Footnote 9 ] The imposition of taxes to
pay ministers' salaries and to build and maintain churches and
church property aroused their indignation. [ Footnote 10 ] It was these feelings which found
expression in the First Amendment. No one locality and no one group
throughout the Colonies can rightly be given entire credit for
having aroused the sentiment that culminated in adoption of the
Bill of Rights' provisions embracing religious liberty. But
Virginia, where the established church had achieved a dominant
influence in political affairs and where many excesses attracted
wide public attention, provided a great stimulus and able
leadership for the movement. The people there, as elsewhere,
reached the conviction that individual religious liberty could be
achieved best under a government which was stripped of all power to
tax, to support, or otherwise to assist any or all religions, or to
interfere with the beliefs of any religious individual or
group.

															The movement toward this end reached its dramatic climax in
Virginia in 1785-86 when the Virginia legislative body was about to
renew Virginia's tax levy for the support of the established
church. Thomas Jefferson Page 330 U. S. 12 and James Madison led the fight against this tax. Madison wrote
his great Memorial and Remonstrance against the law. [ Footnote 11 ] In it, he eloquently
argued that a true religion did not need the support of law; that
no person, either believer or nonbeliever, should be taxed to
support a religious institution of any kind; that the best interest
of a society required that the minds of men always be wholly free,
and that cruel persecutions were the inevitable result of
government-established religions. Madison's Remonstrance received
strong support throughout Virginia, [ Footnote 12 ] and the Assembly postponed consideration of
the proposed tax measure until its next session. When the proposal
came up for consideration at that session, it not only died in
committee, but the Assembly enacted the famous "Virginia Bill for
Religious Liberty" originally written by Thomas Jefferson.
[ Footnote 13 ] The preamble
to that Bill stated, among other things, that

															"Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to
influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil
incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and
meanness, and are Page 330 U. S. 13 a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion,
who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it
by coercions on either . . . ; that to compel a man to furnish
contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he
disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to
support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is
depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his
contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make
his pattern. . . ."

															And the statute itself enacted

															"That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any
religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be
enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods,
nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or
belief. . . . [ Footnote
14 ]"

															This Court has previously recognized that the provisions of the
First Amendment, in the drafting and adoption of which Madison and
Jefferson played such leading roles, had the same objective, and
were intended to provide the same protection against governmental
intrusion on religious liberty as the Virginia statute. Reynolds v. United States, supra, at 98 U. S. 164 ; Watson v.
Jones , 13 Wall. 679; Davis v. Beason, 133 U. S. 333 , 133 U. S. 342 .
Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the First
Amendment did not apply as a restraint against the states.
[ Footnote 15 ] Most of them
did soon provide similar constitutional protections Page 330 U. S. 14 for religious liberty. [ Footnote 16 ] But some states persisted for about half a
century in imposing restraints upon the free exercise of religion
and in discriminating against particular religious groups.
[ Footnote 17 ] In recent
years, so far as the provision against the establishment of a
religion is concerned, the question has most frequently arisen in
connection with proposed state aid to church schools and efforts to
carry on religious teachings in the public schools in accordance
with the tenets of a particular sect. [ Footnote 18 ] Some churches have either sought or
accepted state financial support for their schools. Here again, the
efforts to obtain state aid or acceptance of it have not been
limited to any one particular faith. [ Footnote 19 ] The state courts, in the main, have remained
faithful to the language of their own constitutional provisions
designed to protect religious freedom and to separate religions and
governments. Their decisions, however, show the difficulty in
drawing the line between tax legislation which provides funds for
the welfare of the general public and that which is designed to
support institutions which teach religion. [ Footnote 20 ]

															The meaning and scope of the First Amendment, preventing
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
in the light of its history and the evils it Page 330 U. S. 15 was designed forever to suppress, have been several times
elaborated by the decisions of this Court prior to the application
of the First Amendment to the states by the Fourteenth. [ Footnote 21 ] The broad meaning given
the Amendment by these earlier cases has been accepted by this
Court in its decisions concerning an individual's religious freedom
rendered since the Fourteenth Amendment was interpreted to make the
prohibitions of the First applicable to state action abridging
religious freedom. [ Footnote
22 ] There is every reason to give the same application and
broad interpretation to the "establishment of religion" clause. The
interrelation of these complementary clauses was well summarized in
a statement of the Court of Appeals of South Carolina, [ Footnote 23 ] quoted with approval by
this Court in Watson v.
Jones , 13 Wall. 679, 80 U. S.
730 :

															"The structure of our government has, for the preservation of
civil liberty, rescued the temporal institutions from religious
interference. On the other hand, it has secured religious liberty
from the invasion of the civil authority."

															The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment
means at least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can
set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid
all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can
force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church
against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in
any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining Page 330 U. S. 16 or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church
attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small,
can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions,
whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to
teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal
Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of
any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words
of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law
was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and
State." Reynolds v. United States, supra, at 98 U. S.
164 .

															We must consider the New Jersey statute in accordance with the
foregoing limitations imposed by the First Amendment. But we must
not strike that state statute down if it is within the State's
constitutional power, even though it approaches the verge of that
power. See Interstate Ry. v. Massachusetts, Holmes, J., supra, at 207 U. S. 85 , 207 U. S. 88 .
New Jersey cannot, consistently with the "establishment of
religion" clause of the First Amendment, contribute tax raised
funds to the support of an institution which teaches the tenets and
faith of any church. On the other hand, other language of the
amendment commands that New Jersey cannot hamper its citizens in
the free exercise of their own religion. Consequently, it cannot
exclude individual Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, Baptists,
Jews, Methodists, Nonbelievers, Presbyterians, or the members of
any other faith, because of their faith, or lack of it, from receiving the benefits of public welfare legislation. While we
do not mean to intimate that a state could not provide
transportation only to children attending public schools, we must
be careful, in protecting the citizens of New Jersey against
state-established churches, to be sure that we do not inadvertently
prohibit New Jersey from extending its general state law benefits
to all its citizens without regard to their religious belief. Page 330 U. S. 17 Measured by these standards, we cannot say that the First
Amendment prohibits New Jersey from spending tax-raised funds to
pay the bus fares of parochial school pupils as a part of a general
program under which it pays the fares of pupils attending public
and other schools. It is undoubtedly true that children are helped
to get to church schools. There is even a possibility that some of
the children might not be sent to the church schools if the parents
were compelled to pay their children's bus fares out of their own
pockets when transportation to a public school would have been paid
for by the State. The same possibility exists where the state
requires a local transit company to provide reduced fares to school
children, including those attending parochial schools, [ Footnote 24 ] or where a municipally
owned transportation system undertakes to carry all school children
free of charge. Moreover, state-paid policemen, detailed to protect
children going to and from church schools from the very real
hazards of traffic, would serve much the same purpose and
accomplish much the same result as state provisions intended to
guarantee free transportation of a kind which the state deems to be
best for the school children's welfare. And parents might refuse to
risk their children to the serious danger of traffic accidents
going to and from parochial schools the approaches to which were
not protected by policemen. Similarly, parents might be reluctant
to permit their children to attend schools which the state had cut
off from such general government services as ordinary police and
fire protection, connections for sewage disposal, public Page 330 U. S. 18 highways and sidewalks. Of course, cutting off church schools
from these services so separate and so indisputably marked off from
the religious function would make it far more difficult for the
schools to operate. But such is obviously not the purpose of the
First Amendment. That Amendment requires the state to be a neutral
in its relations with groups of religious believers and
nonbelievers; it does not require the state to be their adversary.
State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than
it is to favor them.

															This Court has said that parents may, in the discharge of their
duty under state compulsory education laws, send their children to
a religious, rather than a public, school if the school meets the
secular educational requirements which the state has power to
impose. See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 26 U.
S. 510 . It appears that these parochial schools meet New
Jersey's requirements. The State contributes no money to the
schools. It does not support them. Its legislation, as applied,
does no more than provide a general program to help parents get
their children, regardless of their religion, safely and
expeditiously to and from accredited schools.

															The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state.
That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve
the slightest breach. New Jersey has not breached it here. Affirmed. [ Footnote 1 ]

															"Whenever in any district there are children living remote from
any schoolhouse, the board of education of the district may make
rules and contracts for the transportation of such children to and
from school, including the transportation of school children to and
from school other than a public school, except such school as is
operated for profit in whole or in part."

															"When any school district provides any transportation for public
school children to and from school, transportation from any point
in such established school route to any other point in such
established school route shall be supplied to school children
residing in such school district in going to and from school other
than a public school, except such school as is operated for profit
in whole or in part."

															New Jersey Laws, 1941, c.191, p. 581; N.J.R.S.Cum.Supp., tit.
18, c. 14,§ 8.

															[ Footnote 2 ]

															Appellant does not challenge the New Jersey statute or the
resolution on the ground that either violates the equal protection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by excluding payment for the
transportation of any pupil who attends a "private school run for
profit." Although the township resolution authorized reimbursement
only for parents of Public and Catholic school pupils, appellant
does not allege, nor is there anything in the record which would
offer the slightest support to an allegation, that there were any
children in the township who attended or would have attended, but
for want of transportation, any but public and Catholic schools. It
will be appropriate to consider the exclusion of students of
private schools operated for profit when and if it is proved to
have occurred, is made the basis of a suit by one in a position to
challenge it, and New Jersey's highest court has ruled adversely to
the challenger. Striking down a state law is not a matter of such
light moment that it should be done by a federal court ex mero
motu on a postulate neither charged nor proved, but which
rests on nothing but a possibility. Cf. Liverpool, N.Y. &
P. S.S. Co. v. Comm'rs of Emigration, 113 U. S.
33 , 113 U. S.
39 .

															[ Footnote 3 ]

															It might hold the excepting clause to be invalid, and sustain
the statute with that clause excised. N.J.R.S., tit. 1, c. 1, § 10,
provides with regard to any statute that, if

															"any provision thereof, shall be declared to be unconstitutional
. . . in whole or in part, by a court of competent jurisdiction,
such . . . article . . . shall, to the extent that it is not
unconstitutional, . . . be enforced. . . ."

															The opinion of the Court of Errors and Appeals in this very case
suggests that state law now authorizes transportation of all pupils. Its opinion stated:

															"Since we hold that the legislature may appropriate general
state funds or authorize the use of local funds for the
transportation of pupils to any school, we conclude that
such authorization of the use of local funds is likewise authorized
by Pamph.L. 1941, ch.191, and R.S. 18:7-78."

															133 N.J.L. 350, 354, 44 A.2d 333, 337. (Italics supplied.)

															[ Footnote 4 ] See Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S.
145 , 98 U. S. 162 ; cf. Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41 , 178 U. S. 89 ,
106.

															[ Footnote 5 ] See, e.g., Macaulay, History of England (1849) I, cc.
2, 4; The Cambridge Modern History (1908) V, cc. V, IX, XI; Beard,
Rise of American Civilization (1933) I, 60; Cobb, Rise of Religious
Liberty in America (1902) c. II; Sweet, The Story of Religion in
America (1939) c. II; Sweet, Religion in Colonial America (1942)
320-322.

															[ Footnote 6 ] See e.g., the charter of the colony of Carolina, which
gave the grantees the right of

															"patronage and advowsons of all the churches and chapels . . .
together with licence and power to build and found churches,
chapels and oratories . . . and to cause them to be dedicated and
consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of
England."

															Poore, Constitutions (1878) II, 1390, 1391. That of Maryland
gave to the grantee Lord Baltimore

															"the Patronages, and Advowsons of all Churches which . . . shall
happen to be built, together with Licence and Faculty of erecting
and founding Churches, Chapels, and Places of Worship . . . and of
causing the same to be dedicated and consecrated according to the
Ecclesiastical Laws of our Kingdom of England, with all, and
singular such, and as ample lights, Jurisdictions, Privileges, . .
. as any Bishop . . . in our Kingdom of England, ever . . . hath
had. . . ."

															MacDonald, Documentary Source Book of American History (1934)
31, 33. The Commission of New Hampshire of 1680, Poore, supra, II, 1277, stated:

															"And above all things We do by these presents will, require and
comand our said Councill to take all possible care for ye
discountenancing of vice and encouraging of virtue and good living,
and that, by such examples ye infidle may be invited and desire to
partake of ye Christian Religion, and for ye greater ease and
satisfaction of ye sd loving subjects in matters of religion, We do
hereby require and comand yt liberty of conscience shall be allowed
unto all protestants; yt such especially as shall be conformable to
ye rites of ye Church of Engd shall be particularly countenanced
and encouraged." See also Pawlet v.
Clark , 9 Cranch 292.

															[ Footnote 7 ] See, e.g., Semple, Baptists in Virginia (1894); Sweet,
Religion in Colonial America, supra, at 131-152,
322-339.

															[ Footnote 8 ]

															Almost every colony exacted some kind of tax for church support. See e.g. Cobb, op. cit. supra, note 5 110 (Virginia); 131 (North Carolina);
169 (Massachusetts); 270 (Connecticut); 304, 310, 339 (New York);
386 (Maryland); 295 (New Hampshire).

															[ Footnote 9 ]

															Madison wrote to a friend in 1774:

															"That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages
among some. . . . This vexes me the worst of anything whatever.
There are at this time in the adjacent country not less than five
or six well meaning men in close jail for publishing their
religious sentiments, which in the main are very orthodox. I have
neither patience to hear, talk, or think of anything relative to
this matter; for I have squabbled and scolded, abused and
ridiculed, so long about it to little purpose, that I am without
common patience. So I must beg you to pity me, and pray for liberty
of conscience to all."

															I Writings of James Madison (1900) 18, 21.

															[ Footnote 10 ]

															Virginia's resistance to taxation for church support was
crystallized in the famous "Parsons' Cause" argued by Patrick Henry
in 1763. For an account, see Cobb, op. cit.
supra, note 5 108-111.

															[ Footnote 11 ]

															II Writings of James Madison, 183.

															[ Footnote 12 ]

															In a recently discovered collection of Madison's papers, Madison
recollected that his Remonstrance

															"met with the approbation of the Baptists, the Presbyterians,
the Quakers, and the few Roman Catholics, universally; of the
Methodists in part, and even of not a few of the Sect formerly
established by law."

															Madison, Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations,
Ecclesiastical Endowments, in Fleet, Madison's "Detached
Memorandum," 3 William and Mary Q. (1946) 534, 551, 555.

															[ Footnote 13 ]

															For accounts of background and evolution of the Virginia Bill
for Religious Liberty see, e.g., James, The Struggle for
Religious Liberty in Virginia (1900); Thom, The Struggle for
Religious Freedom in Virginia: The Baptists (1900); Cobb, op.
cit. supra, note 5 74-115;
Madison, Monopolies, Perpetuities Corporations, Ecclesiastical
Endowments, op. cit. supra, note 12 554, 556.

															[ Footnote 14 ]

															12 Hening, Statutes of Virginia (1823) 84; Commager, Documents
of American History (1944) 125.

															[ Footnote 15 ] Permoli v. New
Orleans , 3 How. 589. Cf. 32 U.
S. Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243.

															[ Footnote 16 ]

															For a collection of state constitutional provisions on freedom
of religion see Gabel, Public Funds for Church and Private
Schools (1937) 148-149. See also 2 Cooley, Constitutional
Limitations (1927) 960-985.

															[ Footnote 17 ]

															Test provisions forbade officeholders to "deny . . . the truth
of the Protestant religion," e.g., Constitution of North
Carolina (1776) § XXXII, II Poore, supra, 1413. Maryland
permitted taxation for support of the Christian religion and
limited civil office to Christians until 1818, id. I, 819,
820, 832.

															[ Footnote 18 ] See Note 50 Yale L.J. (1941) 917; see also cases collected 14 L.R.A. 418; 5 A.L.R. 8, 9; 141 A.L.R. 1148.

															[ Footnote 19 ] See cases collected 14 L.R.A. 418; 5 A.L.R. 879; 141
A.L.R. 1148.

															[ Footnote 20 ] Ibid. See also Cooley, op. cit.
supra, note 16 [ Footnote 21 ] Terrett v.
Taylor , 9 Cranch 43; Watson v.
Jones , 13 Wall. 679; Davis v. Beason, 133 U. S. 333 ; cf. Reynolds v. United States, supra, 98 U. S. 162 ; Reuben Quick Bear v. Leupp, 210 U. S.
50 .

															[ Footnote 22 ] Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.
S. 296 ; Jamison v. Texas, 318 U.
S. 413 ; Largent v. Texas, 318 U.
S. 418 ; Murdock v. Pennsylvania, supra; West
Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.
S. 624 ; Follett v. McCormick, 321 U.
S. 573 ; Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.
S. 501 . Cf. Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.
S. 291 .

															[ Footnote 23 ] Harmon v. Dreher, Speer's Equity Reports (S.C. 1843),
87, 120.

															[ Footnote 24 ]

															New Jersey long ago permitted public utilities to charge school
children reduced rates. See Public S. R. Co. v. Public Utility
Comm'rs, 81 N. J L. 363, 80 A. 27 (1911); see also
Interstate Ry. v. Massachusetts, supra. The District of
Columbia Code requires that the new charter of the District public
transportation company provide a three-cent fare "for school
children . . . going to and from public, parochial, or like
schools. . . ." 47 Stat. 752, 759.

															MR. JUSTICE JACKSON, dissenting.

															I find myself, contrary to first impressions, unable to join in
this decision. I have a sympathy, though it is not ideological,
with Catholic citizens who are compelled by law to pay taxes for
public schools, and also feel constrained by conscience and
discipline to support other schools for their own children. Such
relief to them as Page 330 U. S. 19 this case involves is not, in itself, a serious burden to
taxpayers, and I had assumed it to be as little serious in
principle. Study of this case convinces me otherwise. The Court's
opinion marshals every argument in favor of state aid, and puts the
case in its most favorable light, but much of its reasoning
confirms my conclusions that there are no good grounds upon which
to support the present legislation. In fact, the undertones of the
opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of
Church from State, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion,
yielding support to their commingling in educational matters. The
case which irresistibly comes to mind as the most fitting precedent
is that of Julia who, according to Byron's reports, "whispering I will ne'er consent,' -- consented." I The Court sustains this legislation by assuming two deviations
from the facts of this particular case; first, it assumes a state
of facts the record does not support, and secondly, it refuses to
consider facts which are inescapable on the record.

															The Court concludes that this

															"legislation, as applied, does no more than provide a general
program to help parents get their children, regardless of their
religion, safely and expeditiously to and from accredited
schools,"

															and it draws a comparison between "state provisions intended to
guarantee free transportation" for school children with services
such as police and fire protection, and implies that we are here
dealing with "laws authorizing new types of public services. . . ."
This hypothesis permeates the opinion. The facts will not bear that
construction.

															The Township of Ewing is not furnishing transportation to the
children in any form; it is not operating school busses itself, or
contracting for their operation, and it is not performing any
public service of any kind with this Page 330 U. S. 20 taxpayer's money. All school children are left to ride as
ordinary paying passengers on the regular busses operated by the
public transportation system. What the Township does, and what the
taxpayer complains of, is, at stated intervals, to reimburse
parents for the fares paid, provided the children attend either
public schools or Catholic Church schools. This expenditure of tax
funds has no possible effect on the child's safety or expedition in
transit. As passengers on the public busses, they travel as fast,
and no faster, and are as safe, and no safer, since their parents
are reimbursed, as before.

															In addition to thus assuming a type of service that does not
exist, the Court also insists that we must close our eyes to a
discrimination which does exist. The resolution which authorizes
disbursement of this taxpayer's money limits reimbursement to those
who attend public schools and Catholic schools. That is the way the
Act is applied to this taxpayer.

															The New Jersey Act in question makes the character of the
school, not the needs of the children, determine the eligibility of
parents to reimbursement. The Act permits payment for
transportation to parochial schools or public schools, but
prohibits it to private schools operated in whole or in part for
profit. Children often are sent to private schools because their
parents feel that they require more individual instruction than
public schools can provide, or because they are backward or
defective, and need special attention. If all children of the state
were objects of impartial solicitude, no reason is obvious for
denying transportation reimbursement to students of this class, for
these often are as needy and as worthy as those who go to public or
parochial schools. Refusal to reimburse those who attend such
schools is understandable only in the light of a purpose to aid the
schools, because the state might well abstain from aiding a
profit-making private enterprise. Thus, under the Act Page 330 U. S. 21 and resolution brought to us by this case, children are
classified according to the schools they attend, and are to be
aided if they attend the public schools or private Catholic
schools, and they are not allowed to be aided if they attend
private secular schools or private religious schools of other
faiths.

															Of course, this case is not one of a Baptist or a Jew or an
Episcopalian or a pupil of a private school complaining of
discrimination. It is one of a taxpayer urging that he is being
taxed for an unconstitutional purpose. I think he is entitled to
have us consider the Act just as it is written. The statement by
the New Jersey court that it holds the Legislature may authorize
use of local funds "for the transportation of pupils to any
school," 133 N.J.L. 350, 354, 44 A.2d 333, 337, in view of the
other constitutional views expressed, is not a holding that this
Act authorizes transportation of all pupils to all schools. As
applied to this taxpayer by the action he complains of, certainly
the Act does not authorize reimbursement to those who choose any
alternative to the public school except Catholic Church
schools.

															If we are to decide this case on the facts before us, our
question is simply this: is it constitutional to tax this
complainant to pay the cost of carrying pupils to Church schools of
one specified denomination? II Whether the taxpayer constitutionally can be made to contribute
aid to parents of students because of their attendance at parochial
schools depends upon the nature of those schools and their relation
to the Church. The Constitution says nothing of education. It lays
no obligation on the states to provide schools, and does not
undertake to regulate state systems of education if they see fit to
maintain them. But they cannot, through school policy any more than
through other means, invade rights secured Page 330 U. S. 22 to citizens by the Constitution of the United States. West
Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.
S. 624 . One of our basic rights is to be free of
taxation to support a transgression of the constitutional command
that the authorities "shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ."
U.S.Const., Amend. I; Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 .

															The function of the Church school is a subject on which this
record is meager. It shows only that the schools are under
superintendence of a priest, and that "religion is taught as part
of the curriculum." But we know that such schools are parochial
only in name -- they, in fact, represent a worldwide and age-old
policy of the Roman Catholic Church. Under the rubric "Catholic
Schools," the Canon Law of the Church, by which all Catholics are
bound, provides:

															"1215. Catholic children are to be educated in schools where not
only nothing contrary to Catholic faith and morals is taught, but
rather in schools where religious and moral training occupy the
first place. . . . (Canon 1372.)"

															"1216. In every elementary school, the children must, according
to their age, be instructed in Christian doctrine."

															"The young people who attend the higher schools are to receive a
deeper religious knowledge, and the bishops shall appoint priests
qualified for such work by their learning and piety. (Canon
1373.)"

															"1217. Catholic children shall not attend non-Catholic,
indifferent schools that are mixed, that is to say, schools open to
Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The bishop of the diocese only
has the right, in harmony with the instructions of the Holy See, to
decide under what circumstances, and with what safeguards Page 330 U. S. 23 to prevent loss of faith, it may be tolerated that Catholic
children go to such schools. (Canon 1374.)"

															"1224. The religious teaching of youth in any schools is subject
to the authority and inspection of the Church."

															"The local Ordinaries have the right and duty to watch that
nothing is taught contrary to faith or good morals in any of the
schools of their territory."

															"They, moreover, have the right to approve the books of
Christian doctrine and the teachers of religion, and to demand, for
the sake of safeguarding religion and morals, the removal of
teachers and books. (Canon 1381.)"

															(Woywod, Rev. Stanislaus, The New Canon Law, under imprimatur of
Most Rev. Francis J. Spellman, Archbishop of New York and others,
1940.)

															It is no exaggeration to say that the whole historic conflict in
temporal policy between the Catholic Church and non-Catholics comes
to a focus in their respective school policies. The Roman Catholic
Church, counseled by experience in many ages and many lands and
with all sorts and conditions of men, takes what, from the
viewpoint of its own progress and the success of its mission, is a
wise estimate of the importance of education to religion. It does
not leave the individual to pick up religion by chance. It relies
on early and indelible indoctrination in the faith and order of the
Church by the word and example of persons consecrated to the
task.

															Our public school, if not a product of Protestantism, at least
is more consistent with it than with the Catholic culture and
scheme of values. It is a relatively recent development, dating
from about 1840. * It is organized
on Page 330 U. S. 24 the premise that secular education can be isolated from all
religious teaching, so that the school can inculcate all needed
temporal knowledge and also maintain a strict and lofty neutrality
as to religion. The assumption is that, after the individual has
been instructed in worldly wisdom, he will be better fitted to
choose his religion. Whether such a disjunction is possible, and,
if possible, whether it is wise, are questions I need not try to
answer.

															I should be surprised if any Catholic would deny that the
parochial school is a vital, if not the most vital, part of the
Roman Catholic Church. If put to the choice, that venerable
institution, I should expect, would forego its whole service for
mature persons before it would give up education of the young, and
it would be a wise choice. Its growth and cohesion, discipline and
loyalty, spring from its schools. Catholic education is the rock on
which the whole structure rests, and to render tax aid to its
Church school is indistinguishable to me from rendering the same
aid to the Church itself. III It is of no importance in this situation whether the beneficiary
of this expenditure of tax raised funds is primarily the parochial
school and incidentally the pupil, or whether the aid is directly
bestowed on the pupil, with indirect benefits to the school. The
state cannot maintain a Church, and it can no more tax its citizens
to furnish free carriage to those who attend a Church. The
prohibition against establishment of religion cannot be
circumvented by a subsidy, bonus or reimbursement of expense to
individuals for receiving religious instruction and
indoctrination.

															The Court, however, compares this to other subsidies and loans
to individuals, and says,

															"Nor does it follow that a law has a private, rather than a
public, purpose because Page 330 U. S. 25 it provides that tax raised funds will be paid to reimburse
individuals on account of money spent by them in a way which
furthers a public program. See Carmichael v. Southern Coal
& Coke Co., 301 U. S. 495 , 301 U. S.
518 ."

															Of course, the state may pay out tax raised funds to relieve
pauperism, but it may not, under our Constitution, do so to induce
or reward piety. It may spend funds to secure old age against want,
but it may not spend funds to secure religion against skepticism.
It may compensate individuals for loss of employment, but it cannot
compensate them for adherence to a creed.

															It seems to me that the basic fallacy in the Court's reasoning,
which accounts for its failure to apply the principles it avows, is
in ignoring the essentially religious test by which beneficiaries
of this expenditure are selected. A policeman protects a Catholic,
of course, -- but not because he is a Catholic; it is because he is
a man, and a member of our society. The fireman protects the Church
school -- but not because it is a Church school; it is because it
is property, part of the assets of our society. Neither the fireman
nor the policeman has to ask before he renders aid, "is this man or
building identified with the Catholic Church?" But, before these
school authorities draw a check to reimburse for a student's fare,
they must ask just that question, and, if the school is a Catholic
one, they may render aid because it is such, while if it is of any
other faith or is run for profit, the help must be withheld. To
consider the converse of the Court's reasoning will best disclose
its fallacy. That there is no parallel between police and fire
protection and this plan of reimbursement is apparent from the
incongruity of the limitation of this Act if applied to police and
fire service. Could we sustain an Act that said the police shall
protect pupils on the way to or from public schools and Catholic
schools, but not Page 330 U. S. 26 while going to and coming from other schools, and firemen shall
extinguish a blaze in public or Catholic school buildings, but
shall not put out a blaze in Protestant Church schools or private
schools operated for profit? That is the true analogy to the case
we have before us, and I should think it pretty plain that such a
scheme would not be valid.

															The Court's holding is that this taxpayer has no grievance,
because the state has decided to make the reimbursement a public
purpose, and therefore we are bound to regard it as such. I agree
that this Court has left, and always should leave, to each state
great latitude in deciding for itself, in the light of its own
conditions, what shall be public purposes in its scheme of things.
It may socialize utilities and economic enterprises and make
taxpayers' business out of what conventionally had been private
business. It may make public business of individual welfare,
health, education, entertainment or security. But it cannot make
public business of religious worship or instruction, or of
attendance at religious institutions of any character. There is no
answer to the proposition, more fully expounded by MR. JUSTICE
RUTLEDGE, that the effect of the religious freedom Amendment to our
Constitution was to take every form of propagation of religion out
of the realm of things which could directly or indirectly be made
public business, and thereby be supported in whole or in part at
taxpayers' expense. That is a difference which the Constitution
sets up between religion and almost every other subject matter of
legislation, a difference which goes to the very root of religious
freedom and which the Court is overlooking today. This freedom was
first in the Bill of Rights because it was first in the
forefathers' minds; it was set forth in absolute terms, and its
strength is its rigidity. It was intended not only to keep the
states' hands out of religion, but to Page 330 U. S. 27 keep religion's hands off the state, and, above all, to keep
bitter religious controversy out of public life by denying to every
denomination any advantage from getting control of public policy or
the public purse. Those great ends, I cannot but think, are
immeasurably compromised by today's decision.

															This policy of our Federal Constitution has never been wholly
pleasing to most religious groups. They all are quick to invoke its
protections; they all are irked when they feel its restraints. This
Court has gone a long way, if not an unreasonable way, to hold that
public business of such paramount importance as maintenance of
public order, protection of the privacy of the home, and taxation
may not be pursued by a state in a way that even indirectly will
interfere with religious proselyting. See dissent in Douglas v. Jeannette, 319 U. S. 157 , 319 U. S. 166 ; Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 ; Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141 ; Jones v. Opelika, 316 U. S. 584 , reversed on rehearing, 319 U. S. 103 .

															But we cannot have it both ways. Religious teaching cannot be a
private affair when the state seeks to impose regulations which
infringe on it indirectly, and a public affair when it comes to
taxing citizens of one faith to aid another, or those of no faith
to aid all. If these principles seem harsh in prohibiting aid to
Catholic education, it must not be forgotten that it is the same
Constitution that alone assures Catholics the right to maintain
these schools at all when predominant local sentiment would forbid
them. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.
S. 510 . Nor should I think that those who have done so
well without this aid would want to see this separation between
Church and State broken down. If the state may aid these religious
schools, it may therefore regulate them. Many groups have sought
aid from tax funds, only to find that it carried political controls
with it. Indeed, this Court has Page 330 U. S. 28 declared that "It is hardly lack of due process for the
Government to regulate that which it subsidizes." Wickard v.
Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 , 317 U. S.
131 .

															But, in any event, the great purposes of the Constitution do not
depend on the approval or convenience of those they restrain. I
cannot read the history of the struggle to separate political from
ecclesiastical affairs, well summarized in the opinion of MR.
JUSTICE RUTLEDGE, in which I generally concur, without a conviction
that the Court today is unconsciously giving the clock's hands a
backward turn.

															MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER joins in this opinion.

															* See Cubberley, Public Education in the United States
(1934) ch. VI; Knight, Education in the United States (1941) ch.
VIII.

															MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE, with whom MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, MR.
JUSTICE JACKSON and MR. JUSTICE BURTON agree, dissenting.

															"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ."
U.S.Const., Amend. I. ------- "Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; . . .
that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the
propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and
tyrannical; . . . ."

															" We, the General Assembly, do enact, That no man shall
be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place,
or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained,
molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise
suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief. . . .
[ Footnote 2/1 ] " Page 330 U. S. 29 I cannot believe that the great author of those words, or the
men who made them law, could have joined in this decision. Neither
so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised
between church and state by Virginia's great statute of religious
freedom and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the
states by the Fourteenth. [ Footnote
2/2 ] New Jersey's statute sustained is the first, if indeed it
is not the second, breach to be made by this Court's action. That a
third, and a fourth, and still others will be attempted we may be
sure. For just as Cochran v. Board of Education, 281 U. S. 370 , has
opened the way by oblique ruling [ Footnote 2/3 ] for this decision, so will the two make
wider the breach for a third. Thus, with time, the most solid
freedom steadily gives way before continuing corrosive
decision.

															This case forces us to determine squarely for the first time
[ Footnote 2/4 ] what was "an
establishment of religion" in the First Amendment's conception, and
by that measure to decide whether New Jersey's action violates its
command. The facts may be stated shortly, to give setting and color
to the constitutional problem.

															By statute, New Jersey has authorized local boards of education
to provide for the transportation of children "to and from school
other than a public school" except one Page 330 U. S. 30 operated for profit wholly or in part, over established public
school routes, or by other means, when the child lives "remote from
any school." [ Footnote 2/5 ] The
school board of Ewing Township has provided by resolution for "the
transportation of pupils of Ewing to the Trenton and Pennington
High Schools and Catholic Schools by way of public carrier. . . ."
[ Footnote 2/6 ]

															Named parents have paid the cost of public conveyance of their
children from their homes in Ewing to three public high schools and
four parochial schools outside the district. [ Footnote 2/7 ] Semiannually, the Board has reimbursed the
parents from public school funds raised by general taxation.
Religion is taught as part of the curriculum in each Page 330 U. S. 31 of the four private schools, as appears affirmatively by the
testimony of the superintendent of parochial schools in the Diocese
of Trenton.

															The Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey, reversing the
Supreme Court's decision, 132 N.J.L. 98, 39 A.2d 75, has held the
Ewing board's action not in contravention of the state constitution
or statutes or of the Federal Constitution. 133 N.J.L. 350, 44 A.2d
333. We have to consider only whether this ruling accords with the
prohibition of the First Amendment implied in the due process
clause of the Fourteenth. I Not simply an established church, but any law respecting an
establishment of religion, is forbidden. The Amendment was broadly,
but not loosely, phrased. It is the compact and exact summation of
its author's views formed during his long struggle for religious
freedom. In Madison's own words characterizing Jefferson's Bill for
Establishing Religious Freedom, the guaranty he put in our national
charter, like the bill he piloted through the Virginia Assembly,
was "a Model of technical precision, and perspicuous brevity."
[ Footnote 2/8 ] Madison could not
have confused "church" and "religion," or "an established church"
and "an establishment of religion."

															The Amendment's purpose was not to strike merely at the official
establishment of a single sect, creed or religion, outlawing only a
formal relation such as had prevailed in England and some of the
colonies. Necessarily, it was to uproot all such relationships. But
the object was broader than separating church and state in this
narrow sense. It was to create a complete and permanent separation
of the Page 330 U. S. 32 spheres of religious activity and civil authority by
comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for
religion. In proof, the Amendment's wording and history unite with
this Court's consistent utterances whenever attention has been
fixed directly upon the question.

															"Religion" appears only once in the Amendment. But the word
governs two prohibitions, and governs them alike. It does not have
two meanings, one narrow, to forbid "an establishment," and another
much broader, for securing "the free exercise thereof." "Thereof"
brings down "religion" with its entire and exact content, no more
and no less, from the first into the second guaranty, so that
Congress, and now the states, are as broadly restricted concerning
the one as they are regarding the other.

															No one would claim today that the Amendment is constricted, in
"prohibiting the free exercise" of religion, to securing the free
exercise of some formal or creedal observance, of one sect or of
many. It secures all forms of religious expression, creedal,
sectarian or nonsectarian, wherever and however taking place,
except conduct which trenches upon the like freedoms of others or
clearly and presently endangers the community's good order and
security. [ Footnote 2/9 ] For the
protective purposes of this phase of the basic freedom, street
preaching, oral or by distribution of Page 330 U. S. 33 literature, has been given "the same high estate under the First
Amendment as . . . worship in the churches and preaching from the
pulpits." [ Footnote 2/10 ] And on
this basis, parents have been held entitled to send their children
to private religious schools. Pierce v. Society of
Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 .
Accordingly, daily religious education commingled with secular is
"religion" within the guaranty's comprehensive scope. So are
religious training and teaching in whatever form. The word connotes
the broadest content, determined not by the form or formality of
the teaching or where it occurs, but by its essential nature,
regardless of those details.

															"Religion" has the same broad significance in the twin
prohibition concerning "an establishment." The Amendment was not
duplicitous. "Religion" and "establishment" were not used in any
formal or technical sense. The prohibition broadly forbids state
support, financial or other, of religion in any guise, form or
degree. It outlaws all use of public funds for religious
purposes. II No provision of the Constitution is more closely tied to or
given content by its generating history than the religious clause
of the First Amendment. It is at once the refined product and the
terse summation of that history. The history includes not only
Madison's authorship and the proceedings before the First Congress,
but also the long and intensive struggle for religious freedom in
America, more especially in Virginia, [ Footnote 2/11 ] of which the Amendment Page 330 U. S. 34 was the direct culmination. [ Footnote 2/12 ] In the documents of the times,
particularly of Madison, who was leader in the Virginia struggle
before he became the Amendment's sponsor, but also in the writings
of Jefferson and others and in the issues which engendered them is
to be found irrefutable confirmation of the Amendment's sweeping
content.

															For Madison, as also for Jefferson, religious freedom was the
crux of the struggle for freedom in general. Remonstrance, Par. 15, 330 U.S.
1 app|>Appendix hereto. Madison was coauthor with George
Mason of the religious clause in Virginia's great Declaration of
Rights of 1776. He is credited with changing it from a mere
statement of the principle of tolerance to the first official
legislative pronouncement that freedom of conscience and religion
are inherent rights of the individual. [ Footnote 2/13 ] He sought also to have the
Declaration Page 330 U. S. 35 expressly condemn the existing Virginia establishment. [ Footnote 2/14 ] But the forces supporting
it were then too strong.

															Accordingly, Madison yielded on this phase, but not for long. At
once, he resumed the fight, continuing it before succeeding
legislative sessions. As a member of the General Assembly in 1779,
he threw his full weight behind Jefferson's historic Bill for
Establishing Religious Freedom. That bill was a prime phase of
Jefferson's broad program of democratic reform undertaken on his
return from the Continental Congress in 1776 and submitted for the
General Assembly's consideration in 1779 as his proposed revised
Virginia code. [ Footnote 2/15 ]
With Jefferson's departure for Europe in 1784, Madison became the
Bill's prime Page 330 U. S. 36 sponsor. [ Footnote 2/16 ]
Enactment failed in successive legislatures from its introduction
in June, 1779, until its adoption in January, 1786. But, during all
this time, the fight for religious freedom moved forward in
Virginia on various fronts with growing intensity. Madison led
throughout, against Patrick Henry's powerful opposing leadership
until Henry was elected governor in November, 1784.

															The climax came in the legislative struggle of 1784-1785 over
the Assessment Bill. See Supplemental 330 U.S.
1 app2|>Appendix hereto. This was nothing more nor less than
a taxing measure for the support of religion, designed to revive
the payment of tithes suspended since 1777. So long as it singled
out a particular sect for preference, it incurred the active and
general hostility of dissentient groups. It was broadened to
include them, with the result that some subsided temporarily in
their opposition. [ Footnote 2/17 ]
As altered, the bill gave to each taxpayer the privilege of
designating which church should receive his share of the tax. In
default of designation, the legislature applied it to pious uses.
[ Footnote 2/18 ] But what is of
the utmost significance here, "in Page 330 U. S. 37 its final form, the bill left the taxpayer the option of giving
his tax to education." [ Footnote
2/19 ]

															Madison was unyielding at all times, opposing with all his vigor
the general and nondiscriminatory, as he had the earlier particular
and discriminatory, assessments proposed. The modified Assessment
Bill passed second reading in December, 1784, and was all but
enacted. Madison and his followers, however, maneuvered deferment
of final consideration until November, 1785. And, before the
Assembly reconvened in the fall, he issued his historic Memorial
and Remonstrance. [ Footnote
2/20 ]

															This is Madison's complete, though not his only, interpretation
of religious liberty. [ Footnote
2/21 ] It is a broadside attack upon all forms of
"establishment" of religion, both general and particular,
nondiscriminatory or selective. Reflecting not only the many
legislative conflicts over the Assessment Bill and the Bill for
Establishing Religious Freedom, but also, for example, the
struggles for religious incorporations and the continued
maintenance of the glebes, the Remonstrance is at once the most
concise and the most accurate statement of the views of the First
Amendment's author concerning what is "an establishment of
religion." Because it behooves us in the dimming distance of time
not Page 330 U. S. 38 to lose sight of what he and his coworkers had in mind when, by
a single sweeping stroke of the pen, they forbade an establishment
of religion and secured its free exercise, the text of the
Remonstrance is 330 U.S.
1 app|>appended at the end of this opinion for its wider
current reference, together with a copy of the bill against which
it was directed.

															The Remonstrance, stirring up a storm of popular protest, killed
the Assessment Bill. [ Footnote
2/22 ] It collapsed in committee shortly before Christmas, 1785.
With this, the way was cleared at last for enactment of Jefferson's
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. Madison promptly drove it
through in January of 1786, seven years from the time it was first
introduced. This dual victory substantially ended the fight over
establishments, settling the issue against them. See 330 U.S.
1 fn2/33|>note 33.

															The next year, Madison became a member of the Constitutional
Convention. Its work done, he fought valiantly to secure the
ratification of its great product in Virginia, as elsewhere, and
nowhere else more effectively. [ Footnote 2/23 ] Madison was certain in his own mind
that, under the Constitution "there is not a shadow of right in the
general government to intermeddle with religion," [ Footnote 2/24 ] and that "this subject is, for the
honor of America, perfectly free and Page 330 U. S. 39 unshackled. The government has no jurisdiction over it. . . ."
[ Footnote 2/25 ] Nevertheless he
pledged that he would work for a Bill of Rights, including a
specific guaranty of religious freedom, and Virginia, with other
states, ratified the Constitution on this assurance. [ Footnote 2/26 ]

															Ratification thus accomplished, Madison was sent to the first
Congress. There he went at once about performing his pledge to
establish freedom for the nation as he had done in Virginia. Within
a little more than three years from his legislative victory at
home, he had proposed and secured the submission and ratification
of the First Amendment as the first article of our Bill of Rights.
[ Footnote 2/27 ]

															All the great instruments of the Virginia struggle for religious
liberty thus became warp and woof of our constitutional tradition,
not simply by the course of history, but by the common unifying
force of Madison's life, thought and sponsorship. He epitomized the
whole of that tradition in the Amendment's compact, but nonetheless
comprehensive, phrasing.

															As the Remonstrance discloses throughout, Madison opposed every
form and degree of official relation between religion and civil
authority. For him, religion was a wholly private matter beyond the
scope of civil power Page 330 U. S. 40 either to restrain or to support. [ Footnote 2/28 ] Denial or abridgment of religious
freedom was a violation of rights both of conscience and of natural
equality. State aid was no less obnoxious or destructive to freedom
and to religion itself than other forms of state interference.
"Establishment" and "free exercise" were correlative and
coextensive ideas, representing only different facets of the single
great and fundamental freedom. The Remonstrance, following the
Virginia statute's example, referred to the history of religious
conflicts and the effects of all sorts of establishments, current
and historical, to suppress religion's free exercise. With
Jefferson, Madison believed that to tolerate any fragment of
establishment would be by so much to perpetuate restraint upon that
freedom. Hence, he sought to tear out the institution not
partially, but root and branch, and to bar its return forever.

															In no phase was he more unrelentingly absolute than in opposing
state support or aid by taxation. Not even "three pence"
contribution was thus to be exacted from any citizen for such a
purpose. Remonstrance, Par. 3. [ Footnote 2/29 ] Page 330 U. S. 41 Tithes had been the lifeblood of establishment before and after
other compulsions disappeared. Madison and his coworkers made no
exceptions or abridgments to the complete separation they created.
Their objection was not to small tithes. It was to any tithes
whatsoever. "If it were lawful to impose a small tax for religion,
the admission would pave the way for oppressive levies." [ Footnote 2/30 ] Not the amount, but "the
principle of assessment, was wrong." And the principle was as much
to prevent "the interference of law in religion" as to restrain
religious intervention in political matters. [ Footnote 2/31 ] In this field, the authors of our
freedom would not tolerate "the first experiment on our liberties"
or "wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise,
and entangled the question in precedents." Remonstrance, Par. 3.
Nor should we.

															In view of this history, no further proof is needed that the
Amendment forbids any appropriation, large or small, from public
funds to aid or support any and all religious exercises. But if
more were called for, the debates in the First Congress and this
Court's consistent expressions, whenever it has touched on the
matter directly, [ Footnote 2/32 ]
supply it. Page 330 U. S. 42 By contrast with the Virginia history, the congressional debates
on consideration of the Amendment reveal only sparse discussion,
reflecting the fact that the essential issues had been settled.
[ Footnote 2/33 ] Indeed, the
matter had become so well understood as to have been taken for
granted in all but formal phrasing. Hence, the only enlightening
reference shows concern not to preserve any power to use public
funds in aid of religion, but to prevent the Amendment from
outlawing private gifts inadvertently by virtue of the breadth of
its wording. [ Footnote 2/34 ] In
the Page 330 U. S. 43 margin are noted also the principal decisions in which
expressions of this Court confirm the Amendment's broad
prohibition. [ Footnote 2/35 ] Page 330 U. S. 44 III .

															Compulsory attendance upon religious exercises went out early in
the process of separating church and state, together with forced
observance of religious forms and ceremonies. [ Footnote 2/36 ] Test oaths and religious
qualification for office followed later. [ Footnote 2/37 ] These things none devoted to our great
tradition of religious liberty would think of bringing back. Hence,
today, apart from efforts to inject religious training or exercises
and sectarian issues into the public schools, the only serious
surviving threat to maintaining that complete and permanent
separation of religion and civil power which the First Amendment
commands is through use of the taxing power to support religion,
religious establishments, or establishments having a religious
foundation, whatever their form or special religious function.

															Does New Jersey's action furnish support for religion by use of
the taxing power? Certainly it does, if the test remains undiluted
as Jefferson and Madison made it, that money taken by taxation from
one is not to be used or given to support another's religious
training or belief, or indeed one's own. [ Footnote 2/38 ] Today, as then, the furnishing of
"contributions Page 330 U. S. 45 of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves"
is the forbidden exaction, and the prohibition is absolute for
whatever measure brings that consequence and whatever amount may be
sought or given to that end.

															The funds used here were raised by taxation. The Court does not
dispute, nor could it, that their use does, in fact, give aid and
encouragement to religious instruction. It only concludes that this
aid is not "support" in law. But Madison and Jefferson were
concerned with aid and support in fact, not as a legal conclusion
"entangled in precedents." Remonstrance, Par. 3. Here, parents pay
money to send their children to parochial schools, and funds raised
by taxation are used to reimburse them. This not only helps the
children to get to school and the parents to send them. It aids
them in a substantial way to get the very thing which they are sent
to the particular school to secure, namely, religious training and
teaching.

															Believers of all faiths, and others who do not express their
feeling toward ultimate issues of existence in any creedal form,
pay the New Jersey tax. When the money so raised is used to pay for
transportation to religious schools, the Catholic taxpayer, to the
extent of his proportionate share, pays for the transportation of
Lutheran, Jewish and otherwise religiously affiliated children to
receive their non-Catholic religious instruction. Their parents
likewise pay proportionately for the transportation of Catholic
children to receive Catholic instruction. Each thus contributes to
"the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves" in so far as
their religions differ, as do others who accept no creed without
regard to those differences. Each Page 330 U. S. 46 thus pays taxes also to support the teaching of his own
religion, an exaction equally forbidden, since it denies "the
comfortable liberty" of giving one's contribution to the particular
agency of instruction he approves. [ Footnote 2/39 ]

															New Jersey's action therefore exactly fits the type of exaction
and the kind of evil at which Madison and Jefferson struck. Under
the test they framed, it cannot be said that the cost of
transportation is no part of the cost of education or of the
religious instruction given. That it is a substantial and a
necessary element is shown most plainly by the continuing and
increasing demand for the state to assume it. Nor is there pretense
that it relates only to the secular instruction given in religious
schools, or that any attempt is or could be made toward allocating
proportional shares as between the secular and the religious
instruction. It is precisely because the instruction is religious
and relates to a particular faith, whether one or another, that
parents send their children to religious schools under the Pierce doctrine. And the very purpose of the state's
contribution is to defray the cost of conveying the pupil to the
place where he will receive not simply secular, but also and
primarily religious, teaching and guidance.

															Indeed, the view is sincerely avowed by many of various faiths,
[ Footnote 2/40 ] that the basic
purpose of all education is or should be religious, that the
secular cannot be and should not be separated from the religious
phase and emphasis. Hence Page 330 U. S. 47 the inadequacy of public or secular education and the necessity
for sending the child to a school where religion is taught. But
whatever may be the philosophy or its justification, there is
undeniably an admixture of religious with secular teaching in all
such institutions. That is the very reason for their being.
Certainly, for purposes of constitutionality, we cannot contradict
the whole basis of the ethical and educational convictions of
people who believe in religious schooling.

															Yet this very admixture is what was disestablished when the
First Amendment forbade "an establishment of religion." Commingling
the religious with the secular teaching does not divest the whole
of its religious permeation and emphasis, or make them of minor
part, if proportion were material. Indeed, on any other view, the
constitutional prohibition always could be brought to naught by
adding a modicum of the secular.

															An appropriation from the public treasury to pay the cost of
transportation to Sunday school, to weekday special classes at the
church or parish house, or to the meetings of various young
people's religious societies, such as the YMCA, the YWCA, the YMHA,
the Epworth League, could not withstand the constitutional attack.
This would be true whether or not secular activities were mixed
with the religious. If such an appropriation could not stand, then
it is hard to see how one becomes valid for the same thing upon the
more extended scale of daily instruction. Surely constitutionality
does not turn on where or how often the mixed teaching occurs.

															Finally, transportation, where it is needed, is as essential to
education as any other element. Its cost is as much a part of the
total expense, except at times in amount, as the cost of textbooks,
of school lunches, of athletic equipment, of writing and other
materials; indeed, of all other Page 330 U. S. 48 items composing the total burden. Now, as always, the core of
the educational process is the teacher-pupil relationship. Without
this, the richest equipment and facilities would go for naught. See Judd v. Board of Education, 278 N.Y. 200, 212, 15
N.E.2d 576, 582. But the proverbial Mark Hopkins conception no
longer suffices for the country's requirements. Without buildings,
without equipment, without library, textbooks and other materials,
and without transportation to bring teacher and pupil together in
such an effective teaching environment, there can be not even the
skeleton of what our times require. Hardly can it be maintained
that transportation is the least essential of these items, or that
it does not, in fact, aid, encourage, sustain and support, just as
they do, the very process which is its purpose to accomplish. No
less essential is it, or the payment of its cost, than the very
teaching in the classroom or payment of the teacher's sustenance.
Many types of equipment, now considered essential, better could be
done without.

															For me, therefore, the feat is impossible to select so
indispensable an item from the composite of total costs and
characterize it as not aiding, contributing to, promoting or
sustaining the propagation of beliefs which it is the very end of
all to bring about. Unless this can be maintained, and the Court
does not maintain it, the aid thus given is outlawed. Payment of
transportation is no more, nor is it any the less, essential to
education, whether religious or secular, than payment for tuitions,
for teachers' salaries, for buildings, equipment, and necessary
materials. Nor is it any the less directly related, in a school
giving religious instruction, to the primary religious objective
all those essential items of cost are intended to achieve. No
rational line can be drawn between payment for such larger, but not
more necessary, items and payment for transportation. The only line
that can be so drawn is one between more dollars and less.
Certainly, in this Page 330 U. S. 49 realm, such a line can be no valid constitutional measure. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 ; Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516 .
[ Footnote 2/41 ] Now, as in
Madison's time, not the amount, but the principle, of assessment is
wrong. Remonstrance, Par. 3. IV But we are told that the New Jersey statute is valid in its
present application because the appropriation is for a public, not
a private, purpose, namely, the promotion of education, and the
majority accept this idea in the conclusion that all we have here
is "public welfare legislation." If that is true, and the
Amendment's force can be thus destroyed, what has been said becomes
all the more pertinent. For then there could be no possible
objection to more extensive support of religious education by New
Jersey.

															If the fact alone be determinative that religious schools are
engaged in education, thus promoting the general and individual
welfare, together with the legislature's decision that the payment
of public moneys for their aid makes their work a public function,
then I can see no possible basis, except one of dubious legislative
policy, for the state's refusal to make full appropriation for
support of private, religious schools, just as is done for
public Page 330 U. S. 50 instruction. There could not be, on that basis, valid
constitutional objection. [ Footnote
2/42 ]

															Of course, paying the cost of transportation promotes the
general cause of education and the welfare of the individual. So
does paying all other items of educational expense. And obviously,
as the majority say, it is much too late to urge that legislation
designed to facilitate the opportunities of children to secure a
secular education serves no public purpose. Our nationwide system
of public education rests on the contrary view, as do all grants in
aid of education, public or private, which is not religious in
character.

															These things are beside the real question. They have no possible
materiality except to obscure the all-pervading, inescapable issue. Cf. Cochran v. Board of Education, supra. Stripped of its
religious phase, the case presents no substantial federal question. Ibid. The public function argument, by casting the issue
in terms of promoting the general cause of education and the
welfare of the individual, ignores the religious factor and its
essential connection with the transportation, thereby leaving out
the only vital element in the case. So, of course, do the "public
welfare" and "social legislation" ideas, for they come to the same
thing. Page 330 U. S. 51 We have here, then, one substantial issue, not two. To say that
New Jersey's appropriation and her use of the power of taxation for
raising the funds appropriated are not for public purposes, but are
for private ends, is to say that they are for the support of
religion and religious teaching. Conversely, to say that they are
for public purposes is to say that they are not for religious
ones.

															This is precisely for the reason that education which includes
religious training and teaching, and its support, have been made
matters of private right and function, not public, by the very
terms of the First Amendment. That is the effect not only in its
guaranty of religion's free exercise, but also in the prohibition
of establishments. It was on this basis of the private character of
the function of religious education that this Court held parents
entitled to send their children to private, religious schools. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra. Now it declares, in
effect, that the appropriation of public funds to defray part of
the cost of attending those schools is for a public purpose. If so,
I do not understand why the state cannot go farther, or why this
case approaches the verge of its power.

															In truth, this view contradicts the whole purpose and effect of
the First Amendment as heretofore conceived. The "public function"
-- "public welfare" -- "social legislation" argument seeks, in
Madison's words, to "employ Religion [that is, here, religious
education] as an engine of Civil policy." Remonstrance, Par. 5. It
is of one piece with the Assessment Bill's preamble, although with
the vital difference that it wholly ignores what that preamble
explicitly states. [ Footnote
2/43 ] Page 330 U. S. 52 Our constitutional policy is exactly the opposite. It does not
deny the value or the necessity for religious training, teaching or
observance. Rather, it secures their free exercise. But, to that
end, it does deny that the state can undertake or sustain them in
any form or degree. For this reason, the sphere of religious
activity, as distinguished from the secular intellectual liberties,
has been given the two-fold protection, and, as the state cannot
forbid, neither can it perform or aid in performing, the religious
function. The dual prohibition makes that function altogether
private. It cannot be made a public one by legislative act. This
was the very heart of Madison's Remonstrance, as it is of the
Amendment itself.

															It is not because religious teaching does not promote the public
or the individual's welfare, but because neither is furthered when
the state promotes religious education, that the Constitution
forbids it to do so. Both legislatures and courts are bound by that
distinction. In failure to observe it lies the fallacy of the
"public function"/"social legislation" argument, a fallacy
facilitated by easy transference of the argument's basing from due
process unrelated to any religious aspect to the First
Amendment.

															By no declaration that a gift of public money to religious uses
will promote the general or individual welfare, or the cause of
education generally, can legislative bodies overcome the
Amendment's bar. Nor may the courts sustain their attempts to do so
by finding such consequences for appropriations which, in fact,
give aid to or promote religious uses. Cf. Norris v.
Alabama, 294 U. S. 587 , 294 U. S. 590 ; Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.
S. 652 , 324 U. S. 659 ; Akins v. Texas, 325 U. S. 398 , 325 U. S. 402 .
Legislatures are free to make, Page 330 U. S. 53 and courts to sustain, appropriations only when it can be found
that, in fact, they do not aid, promote, encourage or sustain
religious teaching or observances, be the amount large or small. No
such finding has been or could be made in this case. The Amendment
has removed this form of promoting the public welfare from
legislative and judicial competence to make a public function. It
is exclusively a private affair.

															The reasons underlying the Amendment's policy have not vanished
with time or diminished in force. Now as when it was adopted, the
price of religious freedom is double. It is that the church and
religion shall live both within and upon that freedom. There cannot
be freedom of religion, safeguarded by the state, and intervention
by the church or its agencies in the state's domain or dependency
on its largesse. Madison's Remonstrance, Par. 6, 8. [ Footnote 2/44 ] The great condition of
religious liberty is that it be maintained free from sustenance, as
also from other interferences, by the state. For when it comes to
rest upon that secular foundation, it vanishes with the resting. Id. Par. 7, 8. [ Footnote
2/45 ] Public money devoted to payment of religious costs,
educational or other, brings the quest for more. It brings, too,
the struggle of sect against sect for the larger share, or for any.
Here, one by numbers alone will benefit most; there, another. That
is precisely the history of societies which have had an established
religion and dissident Page 330 U. S. 54 groups. Id., Par. 8, 11. It is the very thing Jefferson
and Madison experienced and sought to guard against, whether in its
blunt or in its more screened forms. Ibid. The end of such
strife cannot be other than to destroy the cherished liberty. The
dominating group will achieve the dominant benefit, or all will
embroil the state in their dissensions. Id., Par. 11.
[ Footnote 2/46 ]

															Exactly such conflicts have centered of late around providing
transportation to religious schools from public funds. [ Footnote 2/47 ] The issue and the
dissension work typically, in Madison's phrase, to

															"destroy that moderation and harmony which the forbearance of
our laws to intermeddle with Religion, has produced amongst its
several sects." Id., Par. 11. This occurs, as he well knew, over
measures Page 330 U. S. 55 at the very threshold of departure from the principle. Id., Par. 3, 9, 11.

															In these conflicts, wherever success has been obtained, it has
been upon the contention that, by providing the transportation, the
general cause of education, the general welfare, and the welfare of
the individual will be forwarded; hence, that the matter lies
within the realm of public function, for legislative determination.
[ Footnote 2/48 ] State courts have
divided upon the issue, some taking the view that only the
individual, others that the institution, receives the benefit.
[ Footnote 2/49 ] A few have
recognized that this dichotomy is false -- that both, in fact, are
aided. [ Footnote 2/50 ] Page 330 U. S. 56 The majority here does not accept, in terms, any of those views.
But neither does it deny that the individual or the school, or
indeed both, are benefited directly and substantially. [ Footnote 2/51 ] To do so would cut the
ground from under the public function/social legislation thesis. On
the contrary, the opinion concedes that the children are aided by
being helped to get to the religious schooling. By converse
necessary implication, as well as by the absence of express denial,
it must be taken to concede also that the school is helped to reach
the child with its religious teaching. The religious enterprise is
common to both, as is the interest in having transportation for its
religious purposes provided.

															Notwithstanding the recognition that this two-way aid is given,
and the absence of any denial that religious teaching is thus
furthered, the Court concludes that the aid so given is not
"support" of religion. It is, rather, only support of education as
such, without reference to its religious content, and thus becomes
public welfare legislation. To this elision of the religious
element from the case is added gloss in two respects, one that the
aid extended partakes of the nature of a safety measure, the other
that failure to provide it would make the state unneutral in
religious matters, discriminating against or hampering such
children concerning public benefits all others receive. Page 330 U. S. 57 As will be noted, the one gloss is contradicted by the facts of
record, and the other is of whole cloth with the "public function"
argument's excision of the religious factor. [ Footnote 2/52 ] But most important is that this
approach, if valid, supplies a ready method for nullifying the
Amendment's guaranty not only for this case and others involving
small grants in aid for religious education, but equally for larger
ones. The only thing needed will be for the Court again to
transplant the "public welfare/public function" view from its
proper nonreligious due process bearing to First Amendment
application, holding that religious education is not "supported,"
though it may be aided, by the appropriation, and that the cause of
education generally is furthered by helping the pupil to secure
that type of training.

															This is not therefore just a little case over bus fares. In
paraphrase of Madison, distant as it may be in its present form
from a complete establishment of religion, it differs from it only
in degree, and is the first step in that direction. Id.. Par. 9. [ Footnote 2/53 ] Today, as
in his time,

															"the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute
three pence only . . . for the support of any one [religious]
establishment, may force him"

															to pay more, or "to conform to ally other establishment in all
cases whatsoever." And now, as then,

															"either . . . we must say, that the will of the Legislature is
the only measure of their authority, and that, in the plenitude of
this authority, they may sweep away all our fundamental rights, or
that they are bound to leave this particular right untouched and
sacred."

															Remonstrance, Par. 15.

															The realm of religious training and belief remains, as the
Amendment made it, the kingdom of the individual Page 330 U. S. 58 man and his God. It should be kept inviolately private, not
"entangled . . . in precedents" [ Footnote 2/54 ] or confounded with what legislatures
legitimately may take over into the public domain. V No one conscious of religious values can be unsympathetic toward
the burden which our constitutional separation puts on parents who
desire religious instruction mixed with secular for their children.
They pay taxes for others' children's education; at the same time,
the added cost of instruction for their own. Nor can one happily
see benefits denied to children which others receive because, in
conscience, they, or their parents for them, desire a different
kind of training others do not demand.

															But if those feelings should prevail, there would be an end to
our historic constitutional policy and command. No more unjust or
discriminatory, in fact, is it to deny attendants at religious
schools the cost of their transportation than it is to deny them
tuitions, sustenance for their teachers, or any other educational
expense which others receive at public cost. Hardship, in fact,
there is which none can blink. But, for assuring to those who
undergo it the greater, the most comprehensive freedom, it is one
written by design and firm intent into our basic law.

															Of course, discrimination in the legal sense does not exist. The
child attending the religious school has the same right as any
other to attend the public school. But he foregoes exercising it
because the same guaranty which assures this freedom forbids the
public school or any agency of the Page 330 U. S. 59 state to give or aid him in securing the religious instruction
he seeks.

															Were he to accept the common school, he would be the first to
protest the teaching there of any creed or faith not his own. And
it is precisely for the reason that their atmosphere is wholly
secular that children are not sent to public schools under the Pierce doctrine. But that is a constitutional necessity,
because we have staked the very existence of our country on the
faith that complete separation between the state and religion is
best for the state and best for religion. Remonstrance, Par. 8,
12.

															That policy necessarily entails hardship upon persons who forego
the right to educational advantages the state can supply in order
to secure others it is precluded from giving. Indeed, this may
hamper the parent and the child forced by conscience to that
choice. But it does not make the state unneutral to withhold what
the Constitution forbids it to give. On the contrary, it is only by
observing the prohibition rigidly that the state can maintain its
neutrality and avoid partisanship in the dissensions inevitable
when sect opposes sect over demands for public moneys to further
religious education, teaching or training in any form or degree,
directly or indirectly. Like St. Paul's freedom, religious liberty
with a great price must be bought. And for those who exercise it
most fully, by insisting upon religious education for their
children mixed with secular, by the terms of our Constitution, the
price is greater than for others.

															The problem, then, cannot be cast in terms of legal
discrimination or its absence. This would be true even though the
state, in giving aid, should treat all religious instruction alike.
Thus, if the present statute and its application were shown to
apply equally to all religious schools Page 330 U. S. 60 of whatever faith, [ Footnote
2/55 ] yet, in the light of our tradition, it could not stand.
For then, the adherent of one creed still would pay for the support
of another, the childless taxpayer with others more fortunate. Then
too there would seem to be no bar to making appropriations for
transportation and other expenses of children attending public or
other secular schools, after hours in separate places and classes
for their exclusively religious instruction. The person who
embraces no creed also would be forced to pay for teaching what he
does not believe. Again, it was the furnishing of "contributions of
money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves" that
the fathers outlawed. That consequence and effect are not removed
by multiplying to all-inclusiveness the sects for which support is
exacted. The Constitution requires not comprehensive identification
of state with religion, but complete separation. VI Short treatment will dispose of what remains. Whatever might be
said of some other application of New Jersey's statute, the one
made here has no semblance of bearing as a safety measure or,
indeed, for securing expeditious conveyance. The transportation
supplied is by public conveyance, subject to all the hazards and
delays of the highway and the streets incurred by the public
generally in going about its multifarious business.

															Nor is the case comparable to one of furnishing fire or police
protection, or access to public highways. These things are matters
of common right, part of the general Page 330 U. S. 61 need for safety. [ Footnote
2/56 ] Certainly the fire department must not stand idly by
while the church burns. Nor is this reason why the state should pay
the expense of transportation or other items of the cost of
religious education. [ Footnote
2/57 ]

															Needless to add, we have no such case as Green v.
Frazier, 253 U. S. 233 , or Carmichael v. Southern Coal Co., 301 U.
S. 495 , which dealt with matters wholly unrelated to the
First Amendment, involving only situations where the "public
function" issue was determinative.

															I have chosen to place my dissent upon the broad ground I think
decisive, though, strictly speaking, the case might be decided on
narrower issues. The New Jersey statute might be held invalid on
its face for the exclusion of children Page 330 U. S. 62 who attend private, profit-making schools. [ Footnote 2/58 ] I cannot assume, as does the
majority, that the New Jersey courts would write off this explicit
limitation from the statute. Moreover, the resolution by which the
statute was applied expressly limits its benefits to students of
public and Catholic schools. [ Footnote 2/59 ] There is no showing that there are no
other private or religious schools in this populous district.
[ Footnote 2/60 ] I do not think it
can be assumed there were none. [ Footnote 2/61 ] But, in the view I have taken, it is
unnecessary to limit grounding to these matters. Page 330 U. S. 63 Two great drives are constantly in motion to abridge, in the
name of education, the complete division of religion and civil
authority which our forefathers made. One is to introduce religious
education and observances into the public schools. The other, to
obtain public funds for the aid and support of various private
religious schools. See Johnson, The Legal Status of
Church-State Relationships in the United States (1934); Thayer,
Religion in Public Education (1947); Note (1941) 50 Yale L.J. 917.
In my opinion, both avenues were closed by the Constitution.
Neither should be opened by this Court. The matter is not one of
quantity, to be measured by the amount of money expended. Now, as
in Madison's day, it is one of principle, to keep separate the
separate spheres as the First Amendment drew them, to prevent the
first experiment upon our liberties, and to keep the question from
becoming entangled in corrosive precedents. We should not be less
strict to keep strong and untarnished the one side of the shield of
religious freedom than we have been of the other.

															The judgment should be reversed.

															[ Footnote 2/1 ]

															"A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," enacted by the
General Assembly of Virginia, January 19, 1786. See 1
Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1858) 219-220; XII Hening's
Statutes of Virginia (1823) 84.

															[ Footnote 2/2 ] Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147 ; Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 ; Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 ; Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158 ; Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516 , 323 U. S.
530 .

															[ Footnote 2/3 ]

															The briefs did not raise the First Amendment issue. The only one
presented was whether the state's action involved a public or an
exclusively private function under the due process clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. See 330 U. S. infra. On the facts, the cost of transportation here is
inseparable from both religious and secular teaching at the
religious school. In the Cochran case, the state furnished
secular textbooks only. But see text, infra at 330 U.S.
1 fn2/40|>note 40 et seq., and 330 U.
S. [ Footnote 2/4 ] Cf. 330 U.S.
1 fn2/3|>note 3 and text, 330 U. S. see
also 330 U.S.
1 fn2/35|>note 35.

															[ Footnote 2/5 ]

															The statute reads:

															"Whenever in any district there are children living remote from
any schoolhouse, the board of education of the district may make
rules and contracts for the transportation of such children to and
from school . . . other than a public school, except such school as
is operated for profit in whole or in part."

															"When any school district provides any transportation for public
school children to and from school, transportation from any point
in such established school route to any other point in such
established school route shall be supplied to school children
residing in such school district in going to and from school other
than a public school, except such school as is operated for profit
in whole or in part."

															Laws of New Jersey (1941) c.191.

															[ Footnote 2/6 ]

															The full text of the resolution is given in 330 U.S.
1 fn2/59|>note 59 infra. [ Footnote 2/7 ]

															The public schools attended were the Trenton Senior High School,
the Trenton Junior High School, and the Pennington High School.
Ewing Township itself provides no public high schools, affording
only elementary public schools which stop with the eighth grade.
The Ewing school board pays for both transportation and tuitions of
pupils attending the public high schools. The only private schools,
all Catholic, covered in application of the resolution are St.
Mary's Cathedral High School, Trenton Catholic Boys High School,
and two elementary parochial schools, St. Hedwig's Parochial School
and St. Francis School. The Ewing board pays only for
transportation to these schools, not for tuitions. So far as the
record discloses, the board does not pay for or provide
transportation to any other elementary school, public or private. See notes 330 U.S.
1 fn2/58|>58, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/59|>59 and text infra. [ Footnote 2/8 ]

															IX Writings of James Madison (ed. by Hunt, 1910) 288; Padover,
Jefferson (1942) 74. Madison's characterization related to
Jefferson's entire revision of the Virginia Code, of which the Bill
for Establishing Religious Freedom was part. See 330 U.S.
1 fn2/15|>note 15.

															[ Footnote 2/9 ] See Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S.
145 ; Davis v. Beason, 133 U.
S. 333 ; Mormon Church v. United States, 136 U. S. 1 ; Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S.
11 ; Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.
S. 158 ; also Cleveland v. United States, 329 U. S. 14 .

															Possibly the first official declaration of the "clear and
present danger" doctrine was Jefferson's declaration in the
Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom:

															"That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out
into overt acts against peace and good order."

															1 Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1858) 220; Padover,
Jefferson (1942) 81. For Madison's view to the same effect, see 330 U.S.
1 fn2/28|>note 28 infra. [ Footnote 2/10 ] Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.
S. 105 , 319 U. S. 109 ; Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141 ; Jamison v. Texas, 318 U. S. 413 ; Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U. S. 501 ; Tucker v. Texas, 326 U. S. 517 .

															[ Footnote 2/11 ]

															Conflicts in other states, and earlier in the colonies,
contributed much to generation of the Amendment, but none so
directly as that in Virginia or with such formative influence on
the Amendment's content and wording. See Cobb, Rise of
Religious Liberty in America (1902); Sweet, The Story of Religion
in America (1939). The Charter of Rhode Island of 1663, II Poore,
Constitutions (1878) 1595, was the first colonial charter to
provide for religious freedom.

															The climactic period of the Virginia struggle covers the decade
1776-1786, from adoption of the Declaration of Rights to enactment
of the Statute for Religious Freedom. For short accounts, see Padover, Jefferson (1942) c. V; Brant, James Madison,
The Virginia Revolutionist (1941) cc. XII, XV; James, The Struggle
for Religious Liberty in Virginia (1900) cc. X, XI; Eckenrode,
Separation of Church and State in Virginia (1910). These works and
Randall, see 330 U.S.
1 fn2/1|>note 1, will be cited in this opinion by the names
of their authors. Citations to "Jefferson" refer to The Works of
Thomas Jefferson (ed. by Ford, 1904-1905); to "Madison," to The
Writings of James Madison (ed. by Hunt, 1901-1910).

															[ Footnote 2/12 ]

															Brant, cc. XII, XV; James, cc. X, XI; Eckenrode.

															[ Footnote 2/13 ] See Brant, c. XII, particularly at 243. Cf. Madison's Remonstrance, 330 U.S.
1 app|>Appendix to this opinion. Jefferson, of course, held
the same view. See 330 U.S.
1 fn2/15|>note 15.

															"Madison looked upon . . . religious freedom, to judge from the
concentrated attention he gave it, as the fundamental freedom."
Brant, 243, and see Remonstrance, Par. 1, 4, 15, 330 U.S.
1 app|>Appendix.

															[ Footnote 2/14 ] See Brant, 245-246. Madison quoted liberally from the
Declaration in his Remonstrance, and the use made of the quotations
indicates that he considered the Declaration to have outlawed the
prevailing establishment in principle, if not technically.

															[ Footnote 2/15 ]

															Jefferson was chairman of the revising committee and chief
draftsman. Co-revisers were Wythe, Pendleton, Mason and Lee. The
first enacted portion of the revision, which became known as
Jefferson's Code, was the statute barring entailments.
Primogeniture soon followed. Much longer the author was to wait for
enactment of the Bill for Religious Freedom, and not until after
his death was the corollary bill to be accepted in principle which
he considered most important of all, namely, to provide for common
education at public expense. See V Jefferson, 153.
However, he linked this with disestablishment as corollary prime
parts in a system of basic freedoms. I Jefferson, 78.

															Jefferson, and Madison by his sponsorship, sought to give the
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom as nearly constitutional
status as they could at the time. Acknowledging that one
legislature could not "restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies .
. . and that, therefore, to declare this act irrevocable would be
of no effect in law," the Bill's concluding provision, as enacted,
nevertheless asserted:

															"Yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights
hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that, if
any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to
narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural
right."

															1 Randall, 220.

															[ Footnote 2/16 ] See I Jefferson, 70-71; XII Jefferson, 447; Padover,
80.

															[ Footnote 2/17 ]

															Madison regarded this action as desertion. See his
letter to Monroe of April 12, 175; II Madison, 129, 131-132; James,
cc. X, XI. But see Eckenrode, 91, suggesting it was
surrender to the inevitable.

															The bill provided:

															"That for every sum so paid, the Sheriff or Collector shall give
a receipt, expressing therein to what society of Christians the
person from whom he may receive the same shall direct the money to
be paid. . . ." See also notes 330 U.S.
1 fn2/1|>1, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/43|>43 infra. A copy of the Assessment Bill is to be found among the
Washington manuscripts in the Library of Congress. Papers of George
Washington, Vol. 231. Because of its crucial role in the Virginia
struggle and bearing upon the First Amendment's meaning, the text
of the Bill is set forth in the 330 U.S.
1 app2|>Supplemental Appendix to this opinion.

															[ Footnote 2/18 ]

															Eckenrode, 99, 100.

															[ Footnote 2/19 ] Id., 100; II Madison, 113. The bill directed the
sheriff to pay

															"all sums which . . . may not he appropriated by the person
paying the same . . . into the public Treasury, to be disposed of
under the direction of the General Assembly, for the encouragement
of seminaries of learning within the Counties whence such sums
shall arise, and to no other use or purpose whatsoever." 330 U.S.
1 app2|>Supplemental Appendix.

															[ Footnote 2/20 ] See generally Eckenrode, c. V; Brant, James, and other
authorities cited in 330 U.S.
1 fn2/1|>note 11 above.

															[ Footnote 2/21 ]

															II Madison, 183; and the 330 U.S.
1 app|>Appendix to this opinion. Eckenrode, 100 ff. See
also Fleet, Madison's "Detached Memoranda" (1946) III William
& Mary Q. (3rd Series) 534, 554-562.

															[ Footnote 2/22 ]

															The major causes assigned for its defeat include the elevation
of Patrick Henry to the governorship in November of 1784; the
blunder of the proponents in allowing the Bill for Incorporations
to come to the floor and incur defeat before the Assessment Bill
was acted on; Madison's astute leadership, taking advantage of
every "break" to convert his initial minority into a majority,
including the deferment of action on the third reading to the fall;
the Remonstrance, bringing a flood of protesting petitions, and the
general poverty of the time. See Eckenrode, c. V, for an
excellent short, detailed account.

															[ Footnote 2/23 ] See James, Brant, op. cit. supra, note 11.

															[ Footnote 2/24 ]

															V Madison, 176. Cf. notes 330 U.S.
1 fn2/33|>33, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/37|>37.

															[ Footnote 2/25 ]

															V Madison, 132.

															[ Footnote 2/26 ]

															Brant, 250. The assurance made first to his constituents was
responsible for Madison's becoming a member of the Virginia
Convention which ratified the Constitution. See James,
154-158.

															[ Footnote 2/27 ]

															The amendment with respect to religious liberties read, as
Madison introduced it:

															"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of
religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be
established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be
in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed."

															1 Annals of Congress 434. In the process of debate, this was
modified to its present form. See especially 1 Annals of
Congress 729-731, 765; also 330 U.S.
1 fn2/34|>note 34.

															[ Footnote 2/28 ] See text of the Remonstrance, 330 U.S.
1 app|>Appendix; also notes 330 U.S.
1 fn2/13|>13, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/15|>15, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/24|>24, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/25|>25 supra, and text.

															Madison's one exception concerning restraint was for "preserving
public order." This he declared in a private letter, IX Madison,
484, 487, written after the First Amendment was adopted:

															"The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other, or to a
corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded
agst. by an entire abstinance of the Govt. from interference in any
way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order &
protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by
others." Cf. 330 U.S.
1 fn2/9|>note 9.

															[ Footnote 2/29 ]

															The third ground of remonstrance, see the 330 U.S.
1 app|>Appendix, bears repetition for emphasis here:

															"Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on
our liberties . . . , [t]he freemen of America did not wait till
usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled
the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the
principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the
principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who
does not see that . . . the same authority which can force a
citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for
the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to
any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?"

															(Emphasis added.) II Madison 183, 185-186.

															[ Footnote 2/30 ]

															Eckenrode, 105, in summary of the Remonstrance.

															[ Footnote 2/31 ]

															"Because the bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a
competent Judge of Religious truth or that he may employ Religion
as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretention
falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and
throughout the world; the second an unhallowed perversion of the
means of salvation."

															Remonstrance, Appendix, Par. 5; II Madison 183, 187.

															[ Footnote 2/32 ]

															As is pointed out above, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/3|>note 3, and in 330 U. S. infra, Cochran v. Board of Education, 281 U.
S. 370 , was not such a case.

															[ Footnote 2/33 ] See text supra at notes 330 U.S.
1 fn2/24|>24, 330 U.S.
1 fn2/25|>25. Madison, of course, was but one of many holding
such views, but nevertheless agreeing to the common understanding
for adoption of a Bill of Rights in order to remove all doubt
engendered by the absence of explicit guaranties in the original
Constitution.

															By 1791, the great fight over establishments had ended, although
some vestiges remained then and later, even in Virginia. The
glebes, for example, were not sold there until 1802. Cf. Eckenrode, 147. Fixing an exact date for "disestablishment" is
almost impossible, since the process was piecemeal. Although
Madison failed in having the Virginia Bill of Rights declare
explicitly against establishment in 1776, cf. 330 U.S.
1 fn2/14|>note 14 and text supra, in 1777, the levy
for support of the Anglican clergy was suspended. It was never
resumed. Eckenrode states:

															"This act, in effect, destroyed the establishment. Many dates
have been given for its end, but it really came on January 1, 1777,
when the act suspending the payment of tithes became effective.
This was not seen at the time. . . . But, in freeing almost half of
the taxpayers from the burden of the state religion, the state
religion was at an end. Nobody could be forced to support it, and
an attempt to levy tithes upon Anglicans alone would be to recruit
the ranks of dissent."

															P. 53. See also pp. 61, 64. The question of assessment
however was revived "with far more strength than ever, in the
summer of 1784." Id. at 64. It would seem more factual,
therefore, to fix the time of disestablishment as of December,
1785-January, 1786, when the issue in large was finally
settled.

															[ Footnote 2/34 ]

															At one point, the wording was proposed: "No religion shall be
established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be
infringed." 1 Annals of Congress 729. Cf. 330 U.S.
1 fn2/27|>note 27. Representative Huntington of Connecticut
feared this might be construed to prevent judicial enforcement of
private pledges. He stated

															"that he feared . . . that the words might be taken in such
latitude as to be extremely hurtful to the cause of religion. He
understood the amendment to mean what had been expressed by the
gentleman from Virginia, but others might find it convenient to put
another construction upon it. The ministers of their congregations
to the Eastward were maintained by the contributions of those who
belonged to their society; the expense of building meeting-houses
was contributed in the same manner. These things were regulated by
by laws. If an action was brought before a Federal Court on any of
these cases, the person who had neglected to perform his
engagements could not be compelled to do it, for a support of
ministers or building of places of worship might be construed into
a religious establishment."

															1 Annals of Congress 730.

															To avoid any such possibility, Madison suggested inserting the
word "national" before "religion," thereby not only again
disclaiming intent to bring about the result Huntington feared, but
also showing unmistakably that "establishment" meant public
"support" of religion in the financial sense. 1 Annals of Congress
731. See also IX Madison, 484-487.

															[ Footnote 2/35 ]

															The decision most closely touching the question, where it as
squarely raised, is Quick Bear v. Leupp, 210 U. S.
50 . The Court distinguished sharply between
appropriations from public funds for the support of religious
education and appropriations from funds held in trust by the
Government essentially as trustee for private individuals, Indian
wards, as beneficial owners. The ruling was that the latter could
be disbursed to private, religious schools at the designation of
those patrons for paying the cost of their education. But it was
stated also that such a use of public moneys would violate both the
First Amendment and the specific statutory declaration involved,
namely, that

															"it is hereby declared to be the settled policy of the
Government to hereafter make no appropriation whatever for
education in any sectarian school."

															210 U.S. at 210 U. S. 79 . Cf. Ponce v. Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, 210 U.
S. 296 , 210 U. S. 322 . And see Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.
S. 291 , an instance of highly artificial grounding to
support a decision sustaining an appropriation for the care of
indigent patients pursuant to a contract with a private hospital. Cf. also the authorities cited in 330 U.S.
1 fn2/9|>note 9.

															[ Footnote 2/36 ] See text at 330 U.S.
1 fn2/1|>note 1.

															[ Footnote 2/37 ]

															" . . . but no religious Test shall ever be required as a
Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United
States." Const., Art. VI, § 3. See also the two forms
prescribed for the President's Oath or Affirmation. Const., Art.
II, § 1. Cf. 71 U. S. 4
Wall. 333; Cummings v.
Missouri , 4 Wall. 277; United States v.
Lovett, 328 U. S. 303 .

															[ Footnote 2/38 ]

															In the words of the Virginia statute, following the portion of
the preamble quoted at the beginning of this opinion:

															". . . even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of
his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable
liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose
morals he would make his pattern and whose powers he feels most
persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry
those temporary rewards which, ceeding from an approbation of their
personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and
unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind. . . ."

															[ Footnote 2/39 ] See 330 U.S.
1 fn2/38|>note 38.

															[ Footnote 2/40 ] See Bower, Church and State in Education (1944) 58:

															". . . the fundamental division of the education of the whole
self into the secular and the religious could not be justified on
the grounds of either a sound educational philosophy or a modern
functional concept of the relation of religion to personal and
social experience." See also Vere, The Elementary School, in Essays on
Catholic Education in the United States (1942) 110-111; Gabel,
Public Funds for Church and Private Schools (1937) 737-739

															[ Footnote 2/41 ]

															It would seem a strange ruling that a "reasonable," that is,
presumably a small, license fee cannot be placed upon the exercise
of the right of religious instruction, yet that, under the
correlative constitutional guaranty against "an establishment,"
taxes may be levied and used to aid and promote religious
instruction, if only the amounts so used are small. See notes 330 U.S.
1 fn2/30|>30-31 supra, and text.

															Madison's objection to "three pence" contributions and his
stress upon "denying the principle" without waiting until "usurped
power had . . . entangled the question in precedents," 330 U.S.
1 fn2/20|>note 29, were reinforced by his further
characterization of the Assessment Bill:

															"Distant as it may be, in its present form, from the
Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the
first step, the other the last, in the career of intolerance."

															Remonstrance, Par. 9; II Madison 183, 188.

															[ Footnote 2/42 ]

															If it is part of the state's function to supply to religious
schools or their patrons the smaller items of educational expense,
because the legislature may say they perform a public function, it
is hard to see why the larger ones also my not he paid. Indeed, it
would seem even more proper and necessary for the state to do this.
For if one class of expenditures is justified on the ground that it
supports the general cause of education or benefits the individual,
or can he made to do so by legislative declaration, so even more
certainly would he the other. To sustain payment for transportation
to school, for textbooks, for other essential materials, or perhaps
for school lunches, and not for what makes all these things
effective for their intended end, would be to make a public
function of the smaller items and their cumulative effect, but to
make wholly private in character the larger things without which
the smaller could have no meaning or use.

															[ Footnote 2/43 ]

															"Whereas the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a
natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their
vices, and preserve the peace of society, which cannot be effected
without a competent provision for learned teachers, who may be
thereby enabled to devote their time and attention to the duty of
instructing such citizens, as, from their circumstances and want of
education, cannot otherwise attain such knowledge, and it is judged
that such provision may be made by the Legislature, without
counteracting the liberal principle heretofore adopted and intended
to be preserved by abolishing all distinctions of preeminence
amongst the different societies of communities of Christians; . . .
." 330 U.S.
1 app2|>Supplemental Appendix; Foote, Sketches of Virginia
(1850) 340.

															[ Footnote 2/44 ]

															"Because the establishment proposed by the Bill is not requisite
for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it is is a
contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every page of
it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world. . . . Because
the establishment in question is not necessary for the support of
Civil Government. . . . What influence, in fact, have
ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? . . . [I]n no
instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the
people."

															II Madison 183, 187, 188.

															[ Footnote 2/45 ]

															"Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical
establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of
Religion, have had a contrary operation."

															II Madison 183, 187.

															[ Footnote 2/46 ]

															"At least let warning be taken at the first fruits of the
threatened innovation. The very appearance of the Bill has
transformed that 'Christian forbearance, love and charity' which,
of late, mutually prevailed into animosities and jealousies which
may not soon be appeased."

															II Madison 183, 189.

															[ Footnote 2/47 ]

															In this case, briefs amici curiae have been filed on
behalf of various organizations representing three religious sects,
one labor union, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the states
of Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan and New
York. All these states have laws similar to New Jersey's, and all
of them, with one religious sect, support the constitutionality of
New Jersey's action. The others oppose it. Maryland and Mississippi
have sustained similar legislation. 330 U.S.
1 fn2/49|>Note 49 infra. No state without
legislation of this sort has filed an opposing brief. But at least
six states have held such action invalid, namely, Delaware,
Oklahoma, New York, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin. 330 U.S.
1 fn2/49|>Note 49, infra. The New York ruling was
overturned by amendment to the state constitution in 1938.
Constitution of New York, Art. XI, 4.

															Furthermore, in this case, the New Jersey courts divided, the
Supreme Court holding the statute and resolution invalid, 132
N.J.L. 98, 39 A.2d 75, the Court of Errors and Appeals reversing
that decision, 133 N.J.L. 350, 44 A.2d 333. In both courts, as
here, the judges split, one of three dissenting in the Supreme
Court, three of nine in the Court of Errors and Appeals. The
division is typical. See the cases cited in 330 U.S.
1 fn2/49|>note 49.

															[ Footnote 2/48 ] See the authorities cited in 330 U.S.
1 fn2/49|>note 49, and see 330 U.S.
1 fn2/19|>note 54.

															[ Footnote 2/49 ]

															Some state courts have sustained statutes granting free
transportation or free school books to children attending
denominational schools on the theory that the aid as a benefit to
the child, rather than to the school. See Nichols v.
Henry, 301 Ky. 434, 191 S.W.2d 930, with which compare
Sherrard v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 294 Ky. 469,
171 S.W.2d 963; Cochran v. Board of Education, 168 La.
1030, 123 So. 664, aff'd, 281 U. S. 281 U.S.
370; Borden v. Board of Education, 168 La. 1005, 123 So.
655; Board of Education v. Wheat, 174 Md. 314, 199 A. 628; Adams v. St. Mary's County, 180 Md. 550, 26 A.2d 377; Chance v. State Textbook R. & P. Board, 190 Miss. 453,
200 So. 706. See also Bowker v. Baer, 73 Cal. App. 2d
653 , 167 P.2d 256. Other courts have held such statutes
unconstitutional under state constitutions as aid to the schools. Judd v. Board of Education, 278 N.Y. 200, 15 N.E.2d 576, but see 330 U.S.
1 fn2/47|>note 47, supra; Smith v. Donahue, 202
App.Div. 656, 195 N.Y.S. 715; State ex rel. Traub v.
Brown, 36 Del. 181, 172 A. 835; Gurney v.
Ferguson, 190 Okla. 254 , 122 P.2d 1002 ; Mitchell v. Consolidated School District, 17 Wash. 2d 61,
135 P.2d 79; Van Straten v. Milquet, 180 Wis. 109, 192
N.W. 392. And cf. Hlebanja v. Brewe, 58 S.D. 351, 236 N.W.
296. And since many state constitutions have provisions forbidding
the appropriation of public funds for private purposes, in these
and other cases, the issue whether the statute was for a "public"
or "private" purpose has been present. See Note (1941) 50
Yale L.J. 917, 925.

															[ Footnote 2/50 ] E.g, Gurney v. Ferguson, 190 Okla.
254 , 255, 122 P.2d 1002 ,
1003; Mitchell v. Consolidated School District, 17 Wash.
2d 61, 68, 135 P.2d 79, 82; Smith v. Donahue, 202 App.Div.
656, 664, 195 N.Y.S. 715, 722; Board of Education v.
Wheat, 174 Md. 314, dissenting opinion at 340, 199 A. 628 at
639. This is true whether the appropriation and payment are in form
to the individual, or to the institution. Ibid. Questions
of this gravity turn upon the purpose and effect of the state's
expenditure to accomplish the forbidden object, not upon who
receives the amount and applies it to that end or the form and
manner of the payment.

															[ Footnote 2/51 ]

															The payments here averaged roughly $40.00 a year per child.

															[ Footnote 2/52 ] See 330 U. S. [ Footnote 2/53 ] See also 330 U.S.
1 fn2/46|>note 46 supra, and Remonstrance, Par.
3.

															[ Footnote 2/54 ]

															Thus, each brief filed here by the supporters of New Jersey's
action, see 330 U.S.
1 fn2/47|>note 47, not only relies strongly on Cochran v.
Board of Education, 281 U. S. 370 , but
either explicitly or in effect maintains that it is controlling in
the present case.

															[ Footnote 2/55 ] See text at 330 U.S.
1 fn2/17|>notes 17-19 supra, and authorities cited; also Foote, Sketches of Virginia (1850) c. XV. Madison's
entire thesis, as reflected throughout the Remonstrance and in his
other writings, as well as in his opposition to the final form of
the Assessment Bill, see 330 U.S.
1 fn2/43|>note 43, was altogether incompatible with
acceptance of general and "nondiscriminatory" support. See Brant, c. XII.

															[ Footnote 2/56 ]

															The protections are of a nature which does not require
appropriations specially made from the public treasury and
earmarked, as is New Jersey's here, particularly for religious
institutions or uses. The First Amendment does not exclude
religious property or activities from protection against disorder
or the ordinary accidental incidents of community life. It forbids
support, not protection from interference or destruction.

															It is a matter not frequently recalled that President Grant
opposed tax exemption of religious property as leading to a
violation of the principle of separation of church and state. See President Grant's Seventh Annual Message to Congress,
December 7, 1875, in IX Messages and Papers of the Presidents
(1897) 4288-4289. Garfield, in a letter accepting the nomination
for the presidency, said:

															". . . it would be unjust to our people, and dangerous to our
institutions, to apply any portion of the revenues of the nation,
or of the States, to the support of sectarian schools. The
separation of the Church and the State in everything relating to
taxation should be absolute."

															II The Works of James Abram Garfield (ed. by Hinsdale, 1883)
783.

															[ Footnote 2/57 ]

															Neither do we have here a case of ratemaking by which a public
utility extends reduced fares to all school children, including
patrons of religious schools. Whether or not legislative compulsion
upon a private utility to extend such an and advantage would be
valid, or its extension by a municipally owned system, we are not
required to consider. In the former instance, at any rate, and
generally, if not always, in the latter, the vice of using the
taxing power to raise funds for the support of religion would not
be present.

															[ Footnote 2/58 ]

															It would seem at least a doubtfully sufficient basis for
reasonable classification that some children should be excluded
simply because the only school feasible for them to attend, in view
of geographic or other situation, might be one conducted in whole
or in part for profit. Cf. 330 U.S.
1 fn2/5|>note 5.

															[ Footnote 2/59 ] See 330 U.S.
1 fn2/7|>note 7 supra. The resolution was as
follows, according to the school board's minutes read in proof:

															"The transportation committee recommended the transportation of
pupils of Ewing to the Trenton and Pennington High Schools and Catholic Schools by way of public carrier as in recent
years. On Motion of Mr. Ralph Ryan and Mr. M. French. the same was
adopted."

															(Emphasis added.) The New Jersey court's holding that the
resolution was within the authority conferred by the state statute
is binding on us. Reinman v. Little Rock, 237 U.
S. 171 , 237 U. S. 176 ; Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U. S. 394 , 239 U. S. 414 .

															[ Footnote 2/60 ]

															The population of Ewing Township, located near the City of
Trenton, was 10,146 according to the census of 1940. Sixteenth
Census of the United States, Population, Vol. 1, 674.

															[ Footnote 2/61 ]

															In Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516 , 323 U. S. 530 ,
it was said that the preferred place given in our scheme to the
great democratic freedoms secured by the First Amendment gives them
"a sanctity and a sanction not permitting dubious intrusions." Cf. Remonstrance, Par. 3, 9. And, in other cases, it has
been held that the usual presumption of constitutionality will not
work to save such legislative excursions in this field. United
States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.
S. 144 , 304 U. S. 152 ,
note 4; see Wechsler, Stone and the Constitution (1946) 46
Col.L.Rev. 764, 795 et seq. Apart from the Court's admission that New Jersey's present
action approaches the verge of her power, it would seem that a
statute, ordinance or resolution which, on its face, singles out
one sect only by name for enjoyment of the same advantages as
public schools or their students, should be held discriminatory on
its face by virtue of that fact alone, unless it were positively
shown that no other sects sought or were available to receive the
same advantages.

															| 330 U.S.
1 app| APPENDIX MEMORIAL AND REMONSTRANCE AGAINST RELIGIOUS ASSESSMENTS To THE HONORABLE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA. A MEMORIAL AND REMONSTRANCE. We, the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having
taken into serious consideration a Bill printed by order of the
last Session of General Assembly, entitled "A Page 330 U. S. 64 Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian
Religion," and conceiving that the same, if finally armed with the
sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound,
as faithful members of a free State, to remonstrate against it, and
to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate
against the said Bill,

															1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth
"that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the
Manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and
conviction, not by force or violence." [ Footnote 3/1 ] The Religion then of every man must be
left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the
right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right
is, in its nature, an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because
the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by
their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men. It is
unalienable also because what is here a right towards men is a duty
towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the
Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable
to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and degree of
obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be
considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a
subject of the Governor of the Universe. And if a member of Civil
Society who enters into any subordinate Association must always do
it with a reservation of his duty to the general authority, much
more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil
Society do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal
Sovereign. We maintain, therefore, that, in matters of Religion, no
man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and
that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. Page 330 U. S. 65 True it is that no other rule exists by which any question which
may divide a Society can be ultimately determined but the will of
the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on
the rights of the minority.

															2. Because, if religion be exempt from the authority of the
Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the
Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents
of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited:
it is limited with regard to the coordinate departments; more
necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The
preservation of a free government requires not merely that the
metes and bounds which separate each department of power may be
invariably maintained, but, more especially, that neither of them
be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights
of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment
exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and
are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made
neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and
are slaves.

															3. Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on
our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty
of citizens, and one of [the] noblest characteristics of the late
Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power
had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in
precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and
they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere
this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the
same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all
other Religions may establish with the same ease any particular
sect of Christians in exclusion of all other Sects? That the same
authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence Page 330 U. S. 66 only of his property for the support of any one establishment
may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases
whatsoever?

															4. Because the bill violates that equality which ought to be the
basis of every law, and which is more indispensable in proportion
as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be
impeached. If "all men are, by nature, equally free and
independent," [ Footnote 3/2 ] all
men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal
conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no
less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they
to be considered as retaining an "equal title to the free exercise
of Religion according to the dictates of conscience." [ Footnote 3/3 ] Whilst we assert for
ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the
Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an
equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the
evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is
an offence against God, not against man. To God, therefore, not to
men, must an account of it be rendered. As the Bill violates
equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the
same principle by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the
Quakers and Menonists the only sects who think a compulsive support
of their religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their piety
alone be intrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their
Religions to be endowed above all others, with extraordinary
privileges by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We
think too favorably of the justice and good sense of these
denominations to believe that they either covet preeminencies over
their fellow citizens or that they will be seduced by them from the
common opposition to the measure. Page 330 U. S. 67 5. Because the bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is
a competent Judge of Religious truth or that he may employ Religion
as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension
falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages and
throughout the world. The second an unhallowed perversion of the
means of salvation.

															6. Because the establishment proposed by the Bill is not
requisite for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it
is is a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every
page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world; it is
a contradiction to fact, for it is known that this Religion both
existed and flourished not only without the support of human laws,
but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the
period of miraculous aid, but long after it had been left to its
own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence. Nay, it is a
contradiction in terms, for a Religion not invented by human policy
must have preexisted and been supported before it was established
by human policy. It is moreover to weaken in those who profess this
Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the
patronage of its Author, and to foster in those who still reject it
a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to
trust it to its own merits.

															7. Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical
establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of
Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen
centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on
trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride
and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity;
in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the
Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its
greatest lustre; those of every sect point to the ages prior Page 330 U. S. 68 to its incorporation with Civil policy. Propose a restoration of
this primitive state in which its Teachers depended on the
voluntary rewards of their flocks; many of them predict its
downfall. On which side ought their testimony to have greatest
weight, when for or when against their interest?

															8. Because the establishment in question is not necessary for
the support of Civil Government. If it be urged as necessary for
the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting
Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose, it cannot
be necessary for the former. If Religion be not within [the]
cognizance of Civil Government, how can its legal establishment be
said to be necessary to civil Government? What influence, in fact,
have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some
instances, they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the
ruins of Civil authority; in many instances, they have been seen
upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have
they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers
who wished to subvert the public liberty may have found an
established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government,
instituted to secure & perpetuate it, needs them not. Such a
government will be best supported by protecting every citizen in
the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which
protects his person and his property -- by neither invading the
equal rights of any Sect nor suffering any Sect to invade those of
another.

															9. Because the proposed establishment is a departure from that
generous policy which, offering an asylum to the persecuted and
oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our
country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a
melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy? Instead of
holding forth an asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a
signal Page 330 U. S. 69 of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all
those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the
Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form
from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is
the first step, the other the last, in the career of intolerance.
The magnanimous sufferer under this cruel scourge in foreign
Regions must view the Bill as a Beacon on our Coast, warning him to
seek some other haven where liberty and philanthropy in their due
extent may offer a more certain repose from his troubles.

															10. Because it will have a like tendency to banish our Citizens.
The allurements presented by other situations are every day
thinning their number. To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by
revoking the liberty which they now enjoy would be the same species
of folly which has dishonoured and depopulated flourishing
kingdoms.

															11. Because, it will destroy that moderation and harmony which
the forbearance of our laws to intermeddle with Religion has
produced amongst its several sects. Torrents of blood have been
spilt in the old world by vain attempts of the secular arm to
extinguish Religious discord by proscribing all difference in
Religious opinions. Time has at length revealed the true remedy.
Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has
been tried, has been found to assuage the disease. The American
Theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and compleat liberty, if it
does not wholly eradicate it, sufficiently destroys its malignant
influence on the health and prosperity of the State. If, with the
salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we begin to
contract the bonds of Religious freedom, we know no name that will
too severely reproach our folly. At least let warning be taken at
the first fruits of the threatened innovation. The very appearance
of the Bill has transformed that "Christian Page 330 U. S. 70 forbearance, [ Footnote 3/4 ] love
and charity" which of late mutually prevailed into animosities and
jealousies which may not soon be appeased. What mischiefs may not
be dreaded should this enemy to the public quiet be armed with the
force of a law?

															12. Because the policy of the bill is adverse to the diffusion
of the light of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy
this precious gift ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole
race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet
received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of
false Religions, and how small is the former. Does the policy of
the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once
discourages those who are strangers to the light of [revelation]
from coming into the Region of it and countenances by example the
nations who continue in darkness in shutting out those who might
convey it to them. Instead of leveling as far as possible every
obstacle to the victorious progress of truth, the Bill, with an
ignoble and unchristian timidity would circumscribe it with a wall
of defence against the encroachments of error.

															13. Because attempts to enforce by legal sanctions acts
obnoxious to so great a proportion of Citizens tend to enervate the
laws in general, and to slacken the bands of Society. If it be
difficult to execute any law which is not generally deemed
necessary or salutary, what must be the case where it is deemed
invalid and dangerous?, and what may be the effect of so striking
an example of impotency in the Government on its general
authority.

															14. Because a measure of such singular magnitude and delicacy
ought not to be imposed without the clearest evidence that it is
called for by a majority of citizens, and no satisfactory method is
yet proposed by which the voice of the majority in this case may be
determined or its influence secured. "The people of the respective
counties Page 330 U. S. 71 are indeed requested to signify their opinion respecting the
adoption of the Bill to the next Session of Assembly." But the
representation must be made equal before the voice either of the
Representatives or of the Counties will be that of the people. Our
hope is that neither of the former will, after due consideration,
espouse the dangerous principle of the Bill. Should the event
disappoint us, it will still leave us in full confidence that a
fair appeal to the latter will reverse the sentence against our
liberties.

															15. Because, finally, "the equal right of every citizen to the
free exercise of his Religion according to the dictates of
conscience" is held by the same tenure with all our other rights.
If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we
weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consult
the Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of
Virginia as the "basis and foundation of Government," [ Footnote 3/5 ] it is enumerated with equal
solemnity, or rather, studied emphasis. Either then we must say,
that the will of the Legislature is the only measure of their
authority, and that, in the plenitude of this authority, they may
sweep away all our fundamental rights, or that they are bound to
leave this particular right untouched and sacred. Either we must
say that they may controul the freedom of the press, may abolish
the trial by jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary
Powers of the State, nay, that they may despoil us of our very
right of suffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and
hereditary assembly, or we must say that they have no authority to
enact into law the Bill under consideration. We, the subscribers
say, that the General Assembly of this Commonwealth have no such
authority. And that no effort may be omitted on our part against so
dangerous an usurpation, we oppose to it, this remonstrance;
earnestly praying, as we are in duty Page 330 U. S. 72 bound, that the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe, by
illuminating those to whom it is addressed, may, on the one hand,
turn their councils from every act which would affront his holy
prerogative or violate the trust committed to them, and, on the
other, guide them into every measure which may he worthy of his
[blessing, may re]dound to their own praise, and may establish more
firmly the liberties, the prosperity, and the Happiness of the
Commonwealth.

															rj:

															II Madison, 183-191

															lj:

															:

															[ Footnote 3/1 ]

															Decl.Rights, Art. 16. [Note in the original.]

															[ Footnote 3/2 ]

															Decl.Rights, Art. 1. [Note in the original.]

															[ Footnote 3/3 ]

															Art. 16. [Note in the original.]

															[ Footnote 3/4 ]

															Art. 16. [Note in the original.]

															[ Footnote 3/5 ]

															Decl.Rights -- title. [Note in the original.]

															| 330 U.S.
1 app2| SUPPLEMENTAL APPENDIX A BILL ESTABLISHING A PROVISION FOR TEACHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION Whereas the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a
natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their
vices, and preserve the peace of society, which cannot be effected
without a competent provision for learned teachers, who may be
thereby enabled to devote their time and attention to the duty of
instructing such citizens as, from their circumstances and want of
education, cannot otherwise attain such knowledge, and it is judged
that such provision may be made by the Legislature without
counteracting the liberal principle heretofore adopted and intended
to be preserved by abolishing all distinctions of preeminence
amongst the different societies or communities of Christians; Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That,
for the support of Christian teachers, percentum on the amount, or
in the pound on the sum payable for tax on the property within this
Commonwealth is hereby assessed, and shall be paid by every person
chargeable with the said tax at the time the same shall become due,
and the Sheriffs of the several Counties shall have power to levy
and collect the same in the same manner and under Page 330 U. S. 73 the like restrictions and limitations as are or may be
prescribed by the laws for raising the Revenues of this State. And be it enacted, That, for every sum so paid, the
Sheriff or Collector shall give a receipt expressing therein to
what society of Christians the person from whom he may receive the
same shall direct the money to be paid, keeping a distinct account
thereof in his books. The Sheriff of every County, shall, on or
before the ___ day of _______ in every year, return to the Court,
upon oath, two alphabetical lists of the payments to him made,
distinguishing in columns opposite to the names of the persons who
shall have paid the same, the society to which the money so paid
was by them appropriated, and one column for the names where no
appropriation shall be made. One of which lists, after being
recorded in a book to be kept for that purpose, shall be filed by
the Clerk in his office; the other shall by the Sheriff be fixed up
in the Court-house, there to remain for the inspection of all
concerned. And the Sheriff, after deducting five percentum for the
collection, shall forthwith pay to such person or persons as shall
be appointed to receive the same by the Vestry, Elders, or
Directors, however denominated of each such society, the sum so
stated to be due to that society; or in default thereof, upon the
motion of such person or persons to the next or any succeeding
Court, execution shall be awarded for the same against the Sheriff
and his security, his and their executors or administrators;
provided that ten days previous notice be given of such motion. And
upon every such execution, the Officer serving the same shall
proceed to immediate sale of the estate taken and shall not accept
of security for payment at the end of three months, nor to have the
goods forthcoming at the day of sale; for his better direction
wherein, the Clerk shall endorse upon every such execution that no
security of any kind shall be taken. Page 330 U. S. 74 And be it further enacted, That the money to be raised
by virtue of this Act, shall be by the Vestries Elders, or
Directors of each religious society, appropriated to a provision
for a Minister or Teacher of the Gospel of their denomination, or
the providing places of divine worship, and to none other use
whatsoever; except in the denominations of Quakers and Menonists,
who may receive what is collected from their members, and place it
in their general fund, to be disposed of in a manner which they
shall think best calculated to promote their particular mode of
worship. And be it enacted, That all sums which at the time of
payment to the Sheriff or Collector may not be appropriated by the
person paying the same, shall be accounted for with the Court in
manner as by this Act is directed, and after deducting for his
collection, the Sheriff shall pay the amount thereof (upon account
certified by the Court to the Auditors of Public Accounts, and by
them to the Treasurer) into the public Treasury, to be disposed of
under the direction of the General Assembly, for the encouragement
of seminaries of learning within the Counties whence such sums
shall arise, and to no other use or purpose whatsoever.

															THIS Act shall commence, and be in force, from and after the
___day of _____ in the year ____. A Copy from the Engrossed Bill. rj:

															JOHN BECKLEY, C.H.D.

															lj: Washington Mss. (Papers of George Washington, Vol. 21);
Library of Congress. *

															* This copy of the Assessment Bill is from one of the handbills
which, on December 24, 1784, when the third reading of the bill was
postponed, were ordered distributed to the Virginia counties by the
House of Delegates. See Journal of the Virginia House of
Delegates, December 24, 1784; Eckenrode, 102-103. The bill is
therefore in its final form, for it never again reached the floor
of the House. Eckenrode, 113.

Summary: In Everson v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New Jersey statute allowing reimbursement for parents who sent their children to Catholic schools, ruling that it did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as it provided a public benefit to all students regardless of religious affiliation. The Court also ruled that the statute did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as it served a valid public purpose. This case established an important precedent for the separation of church and state, and the Court's interpretation of the Establishment Clause has had a significant impact on religious freedom in the U.S.