## Facts

- New York City implemented Title I, a federal program funding supplemental remedial education for disadvantaged children on a “secular, neutral, and nonideological” basis.
- The City previously sent public school teachers into parochial schools to provide on-site remedial instruction to eligible students; most participating private-school students attended religious schools.
- In 1985, the Supreme Court held this on-site arrangement unconstitutional and, on remand, a federal district court entered a permanent injunction barring public employees from providing Title I services on religious-school premises.
- To comply with the injunction, the City moved services offsite (including to public schools and mobile units), creating high compliance costs.
- Parties bound by the injunction later sought relief from it, arguing that intervening Establishment Clause decisions had undermined the earlier ruling and that continued enforcement was inequitable.

## Issues

1. Whether a Title I program allowing public employees to provide secular remedial instruction on the premises of religious schools violates the Establishment Clause.
2. Whether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5) permits vacating a permanent injunction when intervening law has significantly changed the governing Establishment Clause analysis.
3. Whether compliance costs constituted a significant change in factual conditions justifying modification of the injunction.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment affirming denial of relief and vacated the permanent injunction.
- The Court held that providing supplemental, secular remedial instruction to disadvantaged children on religious-school premises by public employees under neutral eligibility criteria and specified safeguards does not violate the Establishment Clause.
- The Court concluded that intervening Establishment Clause decisions had significantly changed the legal framework, making continued enforcement of the injunction inequitable under Rule 60(b)(5).
- The Court expressly overruled Aguilar v. Felton and also rejected the relevant portion of School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball addressing a similar program.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 60(b)(5) permits relief from an injunction when the movant shows a significant change in factual conditions or in law such that prospective application is no longer equitable.
- In Establishment Clause review of government aid in religious-school settings, the core inquiry focuses on whether the program results in religious indoctrination attributable to the government, defines recipients by reference to religion, or creates impermissible entanglement.
- Neutral allocation of benefits to students based on secular criteria, without financial incentives to religious institutions and with safeguards ensuring secular instruction, generally defeats a presumption that on-site services amount to state-sponsored religious indoctrination.
- The physical presence of public employees on religious-school premises, by itself, does not establish unconstitutional advancement of religion or excessive entanglement.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a neutrally administered Title I program may place public school teachers in religious schools to provide strictly secular, supplemental remedial instruction with safeguards, and it vacated the standing injunction because intervening Establishment Clause doctrine had displaced the legal basis for continued enforcement.


Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203 (1997)