New York, Oct. 16—Last week the Supreme Court, with something very much like a yawn, affirmed the decision of the lower court, which refused Ohio the right to pass along money to the private, church-related schools on the grounds that what Ohio was up to was circumvention. As a matter of fact, that is exactly correct. The Supreme Court has during the past few years honed its fanatical construction of the First Amendment into a fine blade, which cuts through any attempt by any accumulation of parents, priests, ministers, rabbis, school boards or legislatures to stitch together a plan that provides parents with fundamental freedoms to organize their own schools with some reference to religious principle.
Who says A, the philosophers never tire of reminding us, must say B. If it is true that it is a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution to allow a tax dollar to end up at a parochial school no matter how circuitous the route, then it is true that Ohio has no business permitting parents of private school children to receive the little $90 annual subsidy the legislature of Ohio thought to return to them, in modest compensation for their saving the taxpayers of Ohio the approximately $1,000 per student annual tuition they’d have cost the state by attending the public schools. The decision of last week disposes of most of the public intentions of prominent American politicians for relieving the religious schools of their plight. George McGovern backed, in effect, an extension of the Ohio plan. So did Richard Nixon. So did Nelson Rockefeller. Well, it’s gone now. Where do we go from here?
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