## Facts

- New Jersey authorized local school districts to arrange and fund transportation for children to and from schools, including nonpublic schools, excluding for-profit private schools.
- Ewing Township adopted a policy reimbursing parents for public bus fares used to transport children to public schools and Catholic parochial schools.
- The Catholic schools provided secular instruction alongside religious instruction and were supervised by clergy.
- A township taxpayer challenged the reimbursements as unconstitutional use of tax funds to support religion, invoking the First Amendment (through the Fourteenth Amendment) and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
- The state trial court invalidated the payments under state law; the state’s highest court reversed and upheld the program.
- The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the federal constitutional questions.

## Issues

1. Whether the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether reimbursing parents for transportation costs to parochial schools is a “law respecting an establishment of religion” prohibited by the First Amendment.
3. Whether the reimbursements violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as an impermissible use of tax funds.

## Decision

- The Court affirmed, 5–4, upholding the New Jersey statute and the local reimbursement policy.
- The Court held that the Establishment Clause is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
- The Court held the reimbursements did not violate the Establishment Clause because they were part of a general, religion-neutral program intended to ensure children’s safe travel to accredited schools.
- The Court rejected the due process challenge, treating the spending as serving a public purpose (student safety and access to education).

## Legal Principles

- The Establishment Clause binds state and local governments via the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Government may not establish a church, prefer one religion over another, coerce religious practice, or tax citizens to support religious activity as such.
- A generally available public benefit may be provided on a religion-neutral basis to parents or children, even if some recipients use it in connection with religious schooling, when the aid is directed to secular transportation and not to religious instruction or the religious institution.

## Conclusion

The Court incorporated the Establishment Clause against the states and upheld a neutral transportation reimbursement program, reasoning that publicly funded bus-fare reimbursements to parents served a secular public purpose and did not constitute state support of religious instruction.


Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1 (1947)