Mueller v. Allen (1983)

Mueller v. Allen (1983)

463 U.S. 388

In computing their state income tax, Minnesota taxpayers were permitted a deduction from gross income for expenses for tuition, textbooks and supplies, and transportation of dependents attending elementary or secondary school. Although parents of all pupils benefited from the deduction for school materials, the major benefit accrued to parents of children attending private schools, who were able to deduct tuition costs. Over 95 percent of the children attending private schools were enrolled in sectarian schools. Several Minnesota taxpayers filed suit in federal district court, claiming that the deduction violated the Establishment Clause by providing financial assistance to sectarian schools. In doing so, they relied heavily on Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist (1973), in which the Supreme Court had struck down a program of tuition grants and tax credits which was restricted to parents of private-school pupils. The district court, however, upheld the Minnesota program, distinguishing it from the program invalidated in Nyquist, and after a court of appeals affirmed, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

Opinion of the Court: Rehnquist, Burger, White, Powell, O’Connor.

Dissenting opinion: Marshall, Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens.

MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

Today’s case is no exception to our oft-repeated statement that the Establishment Clause presents especially difficult questions of interpretation and application.…

One fixed principle in this field is our consistent rejection of the argument that “any program which in some manner aids an institution with a religious affiliation” violates the Establishment Clause.… For example, it is now well established that a state may reimburse parents for expenses incurred in transporting their children to school, Everson v. Board of Education, and that it may loan secular textbooks to all schoolchildren within the state, Board of Education v. Allen.

Notwithstanding the repeated approval given programs such as those in Allen and Everson, our decisions also have struck down arrangements resembling, in many respects, these forms of assistance. In this case we are asked to decide whether Minnesota’s tax deduction bears greater resemblance to those types of assistance to parochial schools we have approved, or to those we have struck down. Petitioners place particular reliance on our decision in Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, where we held invalid a New York statute providing public funds for the maintenance and repair of the physical facilities of private schools and granting thinly disguised “tax benefits,” actually amounting to tuition grants, to the parents of children attending private schools. As explained below, we conclude that § 290.09(22) bears less resemblance to the arrangement struck down in Nyquist than it does to assistance programs upheld in our prior decisions and those discussed with approval in Nyquist. 

The general nature of our inquiry in this area has been guided, since the decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman by the “three-part” test laid down in that case: “First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion …; finally, the statute must not foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’” While this principle is well settled, our cases have also emphasized that it provides “no more than [a] helpful signpost” in dealing with Establishment Clause challenges.… 

Little time need be spent on the question of whether the Minnesota tax deduction has a secular purpose.… A state’s decision to defray the cost of educational expenses incurred by parents—regardless of the type of schools their children attend—evidences a purpose that is both secular and understandable. An educated populace is essential to the political and economic health of any community, and a state’s efforts to assist parents in meeting the rising cost of educational expenses plainly serves this secular purpose of ensuring that the state’s citizenry is well-educated. Similarly, Minnesota, like other states, could conclude that there is a strong public interest in assuring the continued financial health of private schools, both sectarian and non-sectarian. By educating a substantial number of students such schools relieve public schools of a correspondingly great burden—to the benefit of all taxpayers. In addition, private schools may serve as a benchmark for public schools.…  

We turn therefore to the more difficult but related question whether the Minnesota statute has “the primary effect of advancing the sectarian aims of the nonpublic schools.” In concluding that it does not, we find several features of the Minnesota tax deduction particularly significant. First, an essential feature of Minnesota’s arrangement is the fact that § 290.09(22) is only one among many deductions—such as those for medical expenses and charitable contributions—available under the Minnesota tax laws. Our decisions consistently have recognized that traditionally “[l]egislatures have especially broad latitude in creating classifications and distinctions in tax statutes,” in part because the “familiarity with local conditions” enjoyed by legislators especially enables them to “achieve an equitable distribution of the tax burden.” Under our prior decisions, the Minnesota legislature’s judgment that a deduction for educational expenses fairly equalizes the tax burden of its citizens and encourages desirable expenditures for educational purposes is entitled to substantial deference. 

Other characteristics of § 290.09(22) argue equally strongly for the provision’s constitutionality. Most importantly, the deduction is available for educational expenses incurred by all parents, including those whose children attend public schools and those whose children attend nonsectarian private schools or sectarian private schools.…   

… [T]his case is vitally different from the scheme struck down in Nyquist. There, public assistance amounting to tuition grants, was provided only to parents of children in nonpublic schools. This fact had considerable bearing on our decision striking down the New York statute at issue.… Moreover, we intimated that “public assistance (e.g., scholarships) made available generally without regard to the sectarian-nonsectarian or public-nonpublic nature of the institution benefited” might not offend the Establishment Clause. We think the tax deduction adopted by Minnesota is more similar to this latter type of program than it is to the arrangement struck down in Nyquist.…

Petitioners argue that, notwithstanding the facial neutrality of § 290.09(22), in application the statute primarily benefits religious institutions. Petitioners rely … on a statistical analysis of the type of persons claiming the tax deduction. They contend that most parents of public school children incur no tuition expenses, and that other expenses deductible under § 290.09(22) are negligible in value; moreover, they claim that 96% of the children in private schools in 1978—1979 attended religiously-affiliated institutions. Because of all this, they reason, the bulk of deductions taken under § 290.09(22) will be claimed by parents of children in sectarian schools.… 

We need not consider these contentions in detail. We would be loath to adopt a rule grounding the constitutionality of a facially neutral law on annual reports reciting the extent to which various classes of private citizens claimed benefits under the law. Suth an approach would scarcely provide the certainty that this field stands in need of, nor can we perceive principled standards by which such statistical evidence might be evaluated. Moreover, the fact that private persons fail in a particular year to claim the tax relief to which they are entitled—under a facially neutral statute—should be of little importance in determining the constitutionality of the statute permitting such relief.…

Turning to the third part of the Lemon inquiry, we have no difficulty in concluding that the Minnesota statute does not “excessively entangle” the state in religion. The only plausible source of the “comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance” necessary to run afoul of this standard would lie in the fact that state officials must determine whether particular textbooks qualify for a deduction. In making this decision, state officials must disallow deductions taken from “instructional books and materials used in the teaching of religious tenets, doctrines or worship, the purpose of which is to inculcate such tenets, doctrines or worship.” Making decisions such as this does not differ substantially from making the types of decisions approved in earlier opinions of this Court. In Board of Education v. Allen, for example, the Court upheld the loan of secular textbooks to parents or children attending nonpublic schools; though state officials were required to determine whether particular books were or were not secular, the system was held not to violate the Establishment Clause.

MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN and MR. JUSTICE STEVENS join, dissenting. 

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits a State from subsidizing religious education, whether it does so directly or indirectly. In my view, this principle of neutrality forbids not only the tax benefits struck down in Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, but any tax benefit, including the tax deduction at issue here, which subsidizes tuition payments to sectarian schools. I also believe that the Establishment Clause prohibits the tax deductions that Minnesota authorizes for the cost of books and other instructional materials used for sectarian purposes. 

The majority attempts to distinguish Nyquist by pointing to two differences between the Minnesota tuition-assistance program and the program struck down in Nyquist. Neither of these distinctions can withstand scrutiny. 

The majority first attempts to distinguish Nyquist on the ground that Minnesota makes all parents eligible to deduct up to $500 or $700 for each dependent, whereas the New York law allowed a deduction only for parents whose children attended nonpublic schools. Although Minnesota taxpayers who send their children to local public schools may not deduct tuition expenses because they incur none, they may deduct other expenses, such as the cost of gym clothes, pencils, and notebooks, which are shared by all parents of school-age children. This, in the majority’s view, distinguishes the Minnesota scheme from the law at issue in Nyquist. 

That the Minnesota statute makes some small benefit available to all parents cannot alter the fact that the most substantial benefit provided by the statute is available only to those parents who send their children to schools that charge tuition. 

It is simply undeniable that the single largest expense that may be deducted under the Minnesota statute is tuition. The statute is little more than a subsidy of general educational expenses. The other deductible expenses are de minimis in comparison to tuition expenses.… 

That [the tuition] deduction has a primary effect of promoting religion can easily be determined without any resort to the type of “statistical evidence” that the majority fears would lead to constitutional uncertainty. The only factual inquiry necessary is … whether the deduction permitted for tuition expenses primarily benefits those who send their children to religious schools.… 

In this case, it is undisputed that well over 90% of the children attending tuition-charging schools in Minnesota are enrolled in sectarian schools. History and experience likewise instruct us that any generally available financial assistance for elementary and secondary school tuition expenses mainly will further religious education because the majority of the schools which charge tuition are sectarian.…

… For the first time, the Court has upheld financial support for religious schools without any reason at all to assume that the support will be restricted to the secular functions of those schools and will not be used to support religious instruction. This result is flatly at odds with the fundamental principle that a State may provide no financial support whatsoever to promote religion. As the Court stated in Everson and has often repeated, “No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”

I dissent.