Note that this opinion did not turn on any church-state
issues, but rather on the court's holding that the voucher program
fostered "plural, nonuniform systems of education" and thus violated
the provision in the Florida constitution requiring the State to
provide a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system
of free public schools..."
This is all still very interesting, though, particularly
since there's a decent argument that the U.S. Supreme Court's aid
cases, particularly the earlier ones, were also in some, if only
implicit, sense as much about defending the public school system as
they were about drawing a line between church and state.
Those words "plural" and "uniform" also have deep resonance
here. Though vouchers, etc., do (maybe for the better) challenge the
privileged status of the public school system, those of us who are
relatively strict separationists would still tend to believe that, in
the long run, they threaten to flatten genuine pluralism by drawing
religious schools more tightly into the bosom of state regulatory control.
Perry
*******************************************************
Perry Dane
Professor of Law
Rutgers University
School of Law -- Camden
217 North Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.camlaw.rutgers.edu/bio/925/
Work: (856) 225-6004
Fax: (856) 969-7924
Home: (610) 896-5702
*******************************************************
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