A federal judge in Indiana has halted the plans of South Bend that would transfer land to a Catholic church for use as an athletic field. The arrangement would violate the First Amendment, Judge Robert Miller ruled yesterday:
Governmental programs or actions that provide special benefits to specific religious entities are impermissible.
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For governmental aid to religious institutions to be seen, for constitutional purposes, as not “endorsing” religion, either the state’s payments must reach religious institutions only indirectly through programs of purely private choice or religious institutions must be getting nothing more than to secular governmental services or supplies on the same terms and conditions as anyone else as part of a neutral program.
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The difference between the market value and what St. Joseph’s High School is giving up is a benefit from a government to a religious institution. The Establishment Clause prohibits governments from providing benefits that a well-informed reasonable person would see as advancing or endorsing religion.
