New York v. Cathedral Academy

As the U.S. Supreme Court underwent change in the latter part of the 20th century, the balance in its membership impacted the way that it resolved cases in many areas, not the least of which included the parameters of acceptable state aid to religiously affiliated nonpublic schools. The conflict that this transformation engendered was evident in New York v. Cathedral Academy (1977), a dispute over a statute that officials at religiously affiliated nonpublic schools relied on in good faith as a means of recovering payments for performing state-mandated sectarian services such as record keeping and testing. The Court stuck the statute down as unconstitutional.