Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 19, 1993 TAG: 9306190025
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The ruling is the first time the court authorized a public employee to participate in religious education, and the third time this month that the justices issued a decision favorable to religion.
Some supporters of government aid to religious schools hailed the 5-4 decision as a sign that the court might endorse proposals to allow parents to use tax "vouchers" to send their children to parochial schools.
But most experts said the decision did not reach nearly that far.
William Bentley Ball, who argued the Supreme Court case on behalf of deaf student James Zobrest of Tucson, Ariz., said it was impossible to tell whether the justices would endorse tutors or other government services in religious schools.
The ruling "does not break any new ground to extend public aid to parochial schools," said G. Robert Boston, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It doesn't pave the way for vouchers or other forms of parochial aid."
Moreover, Boston said, the replacement of Justice Byron White by Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg could shift the court's delicate 5-4 balance on church-state issues.
White voted with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas in saying it's constitutional for school boards to send sign language interpreters into religious schools.
By contrast, Boston said his organization had analyzed Ginsburg's views and "we suspect she is a separationist."
The Supreme Court case arose in 1988 when Larry and Sandra Zobrest decided to send their profoundly deaf son, James, to a Catholic high school.
But the Zobrests' public school district, Catalina Foothills, refused to pay for the sign interpreter their son needed to learn. The district cited the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.
So the Zobrests personally paid $34,000 over four years for an interpreter at Salpointe Catholic High School, where there are crosses on the walls and such mandatory theology courses as Christian morality and Jesus in the Gospels. James Zobrest has since graduated, and is now attending a community college aided by a government-paid interpreter.
Rehnquist, writing for the court majority, said church-state separation is not violated when "the government offers a neutral service on the premises of a sectarian school as part of a general program that is in no way skewed toward religion."
In another ruling, the top court said exposure to harmful amounts of second-hand cigarette smoke may sometimes violate a prison inmate's constitutional rights.
In a 7-2 decision, the court let a Nevada inmate pursue his claim that being forced to share a cell with an inmate who smoked five packs a day violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Inmate William McKinney "must show that he himself is being exposed to unreasonably high levels" of second-hand smoke, White wrote for the court.
In addition, "the prisoner must show that the risk of which he complains is not one that today's society chooses to tolerate," White wrote.
The court rejected Nevada prison officials' argument that the Constitution protects inmates only against prison conditions that cause immediate health problems, and not against harmful effects that may crop up in the future.
"We would think that a prison inmate also could successfully complain about demonstrably unsafe drinking water without waiting for an attack of dysentery," White wrote.
McKinney, a convicted killer is serving a life sentence.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
by CNB