wfn.org | UCC mission agency is amicus in school voucher case

[powellb@ucc.org]

May 11, 2000
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ

Jan Resseger, press contact
(216) 7326-3277
ressegej@ucc.org

On the web: <http://www.ucc.org>

National church mission agency becomes an amicus in
Cleveland school voucher case

     CLEVELAND -- In a brief filed May 8 in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the U.S. mission arm
of the United Church of Christ became an amicus to the
plaintiffs in appeal of the Cleveland Voucher Case,
Simmons-Harris v. Zelman. Joining the United Church Board
for Homeland Ministries as friends of the court are the
American Jewish Committee, Baptist Joint Committee,
National Council of Churches of Christ, and Horace Mann
League.
     The case is being appealed by the defendants, the State
of Ohio and Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Susan
Tave Zelman, following the Dec. 20, 1999, decision by Judge
Solomon Oliver Jr. that the Cleveland Voucher Program
violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of
United States Constitution.  Judge Oliver's decision states that
the Cleveland Voucher Program "has the impermissible effect
of advancing religion by resulting in government
indoctrination of religious beliefs (and) creating an incentive
to attend religious schools."
     "In the tradition of its Pilgrim forbears who brought
community schooling and higher education to the colonies
and its American Missionary Association that founded schools
throughout the South during and after the Civil War as the
path to full citizenship for freed slaves, the United Church of
Christ and its Board for Homeland Ministries have historically
worked to strengthen public schools and to speak out against
anything that weakens our public education system," said Jan
Resseger, Minister for Issues in Public Education for
the Board.  "The Board for Homeland Ministries has become
an amicus in this federal legal appeal to affirm the use of
public funds to support and improve the Cleveland municipal
schools, where the majority of Cleveland's children are
educated, to oppose vouchers which benefit a tiny minority of
children and direct public funds away from already
underfunded public schools, and to speak emphatically to
protect the separation of church and state guaranteed by the
First Amendment."
     In 1991, the Homeland Board passed a resolution
opposing vouchers that direct public funds toward private and
parochial schools.  Also that year, the 18th General Synod of
the United Church of Christ affirmed public schools as
institutions best positioned to strengthen our democracy and
move our society toward social justice in a pronouncement,
"Support of Quality,
Integrated Education for All Children in Public Schools":
     "As Christians we believe that God desires for
children the life abundant which comes from the fullest
development of their gifts   physical, intellectual, social and
spiritual ... The public schools belong to us, the people, and
are controllable by democratic means.  If we have the will, we
can act to ensure that all schools offer equal education for all
children, that the funding, multicultural and academic
offerings, and enrichment programs which exist in one school
system exist in or are accessible to all schools and all school
children."
     The amicus brief supports Judge Oliver's finding that
the Cleveland Voucher Program violates the First Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution because public funds flow into the
general funds of the participating schools where the secular
and religious functions of the schools are inextricably
intertwined.  No attempt is made to direct the vouchers to pay
specifically for secular purposes, which in the past have been
found legal, such as textbooks, transportation, remedial skills
programs, special education or speech therapy.
     In Cleveland 82 percent of the schools in the voucher
program are religious schools, and 96.6 percent of children
carrying vouchers attend religious schools.  These schools
require their students to participate in religious instruction
whether or not the children are members of the church
institutions with which the schools are affiliated.
     The United Church of Christ, with national offices in
Cleveland, has some 1.4 million members and more than
6,000 local churches in the United States and Puerto Rico. It
was formed by the 1957 union of the Congregational Christian
Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church.
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