Lexington Herald Leader Editorial Appreciates "[Kentucky Supreme's] Ruling [Which] Upholds State Constitution: No Tax Funds For Religious University.
Ruling upholds state constitution
No tax funds for religious university
The Kentucky Supreme Court's unanimous ruling against funding a Baptist college's proposed pharmacy school with tax dollars was not surprising, but it did provide an interesting history lesson.
Kentucky's constitution clearly prohibits the allocation of public funds for educational purposes to a "church, sectarian or denominational school." That's well known.
The constitution's authors were not acting out of hostility toward Catholics, however, as is often supposed and was argued in this appeal by the University of the Cumberlands and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
They argued that because the ban on public funding of church schools was grounded in discrimination, it violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and free exercise of religious expression.
There were acts of mob violence in pre-Civil War Kentucky against German and Irish Catholic immigrants, Justice Lisabeth Hughes Abramson wrote in last week's opinion. But there's no evidence of anti-Catholic sentiment 30 years later in the records of the 1890 debates that produced Kentucky's constitution.
Instead, the prohibition in Section 189 was "clearly borne of the framers desire to avoid state support of all religious institutions' schools not of any animosity toward Catholics or any other specific religion."
The General Assembly most certainly may address a need for more pharmacists, said the court, but "not by appropriating public funds to a religious institution."
In a concurring opinion, Justice Bill Cunningham went further back in time and also wrote about the state constitution's guarantee of religious freedom.
He noted that Baptists fled to this country to escape entanglements with the government and early on supported separation of church and state. He said the constitutional wall between religion and government allows this country's "kaleidoscope of faith" to flourish.
"To say that government or courts affect the whereabouts of the Almighty, such as 'putting God in schools' or 'taking God out of schools,' is not only silly but borders on sacrilege. Such a notion banners the lack of faith, rather than the essence of faith," Cunningham wrote.
Such lofty thoughts probably did not figure into Senate President David Williams' decision four years ago to slip $11 million for the University of the Cumberlands proposed pharmacy school into the state budget.
Williams was probably thinking more along the lines of election-year pork-barrel politics. The university is in his district.
Readers will remember, though, that the university quickly demonstrated the wisdom of the constitutional ban on public dollars funding religious schools by expelling a student for revealing on his MySpace.com page that he is gay.
The Supreme Court made the only possible decision in this case.
Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/04/27/1240944.html#ixzz0mLFDNob4
No tax funds for religious university
The Kentucky Supreme Court's unanimous ruling against funding a Baptist college's proposed pharmacy school with tax dollars was not surprising, but it did provide an interesting history lesson.
Kentucky's constitution clearly prohibits the allocation of public funds for educational purposes to a "church, sectarian or denominational school." That's well known.
The constitution's authors were not acting out of hostility toward Catholics, however, as is often supposed and was argued in this appeal by the University of the Cumberlands and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
They argued that because the ban on public funding of church schools was grounded in discrimination, it violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and free exercise of religious expression.
There were acts of mob violence in pre-Civil War Kentucky against German and Irish Catholic immigrants, Justice Lisabeth Hughes Abramson wrote in last week's opinion. But there's no evidence of anti-Catholic sentiment 30 years later in the records of the 1890 debates that produced Kentucky's constitution.
Instead, the prohibition in Section 189 was "clearly borne of the framers desire to avoid state support of all religious institutions' schools not of any animosity toward Catholics or any other specific religion."
The General Assembly most certainly may address a need for more pharmacists, said the court, but "not by appropriating public funds to a religious institution."
In a concurring opinion, Justice Bill Cunningham went further back in time and also wrote about the state constitution's guarantee of religious freedom.
He noted that Baptists fled to this country to escape entanglements with the government and early on supported separation of church and state. He said the constitutional wall between religion and government allows this country's "kaleidoscope of faith" to flourish.
"To say that government or courts affect the whereabouts of the Almighty, such as 'putting God in schools' or 'taking God out of schools,' is not only silly but borders on sacrilege. Such a notion banners the lack of faith, rather than the essence of faith," Cunningham wrote.
Such lofty thoughts probably did not figure into Senate President David Williams' decision four years ago to slip $11 million for the University of the Cumberlands proposed pharmacy school into the state budget.
Williams was probably thinking more along the lines of election-year pork-barrel politics. The university is in his district.
Readers will remember, though, that the university quickly demonstrated the wisdom of the constitutional ban on public dollars funding religious schools by expelling a student for revealing on his MySpace.com page that he is gay.
The Supreme Court made the only possible decision in this case.
Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/04/27/1240944.html#ixzz0mLFDNob4
Labels: News reporting
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 10:19 PM
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