Everson v. Board of Education

State Court Decisions in Everson

Ewing Township did not have its own high school, so, pursuant to a New Jersey law, it routinely paid the high school tuition and transportation costs for its students who wished to attend high school in Trenton or Pennington, New Jersey. Prior to 1941 the Ewing students had attended public high schools in those two districts. In 1941 the state law was amended slightly so that attendance at nonprofit high schools and transportation to any nonprofit school appeared to be included. Some Ewing parents then sent their children to Trenton to Catholic high schools, and the Ewing Board of Education paid the tuition. In addition, the school board directly reimbursed the transportation costs of parents of 16 students attending parochial high schools as well as parents of 5 students enrolled in parochial elementary schools in Trenton.

Ewing resident Arch Everson believed that the board of education had violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause and the First Amendment's Establishment Clause in using public tax monies to reimburse these parents' transportation costs. He believed that public funds were being used unconstitutionally to support their children's attendance at schools run by religious organizations. In 1944, a New Jersey trial court agreed with Everson that the reimbursement of the parents for their children's transportation to religious schools was unconstitutional. It noted that the majority of state courts that had ruled on the issue had also found such reimbursement unconstitutional. State courts in Louisiana, Maryland, and Mississippi, however, had ruled in favor of the parents in similar cases by using the child benefit theory, which permitted public funds to go directly to parents rather than to a religious school without violating the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

In 1945, the Ewing Board of Education appealed the decision to the Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey. This state appellate court reversed the lower court's decision and found for the Board of Education. According to the higher court, state law did permit the use of public funds to reimburse parents for transportation costs without violating the state or U.S. constitutions. Such use of public money supported the state's interest in compulsory education and did not serve private purposes. A dissenting judge's opinion noted prophetically the potential for the limitless application of the child benefit theory to a range of other expenses in the educational process, thus leading to subsidizing parochial and private schools.

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