Facts
- Washington created the Promise Scholarship Program to help academically qualified students pay postsecondary educational expenses using state funds.
- Scholarships were usable at accredited public or private institutions, including religiously affiliated colleges, for many educational costs.
- Washington’s constitution barred using public funds for “religious worship, exercise or instruction,” and the program implemented that limit by excluding devotional theology degrees.
- Joshua Davey met eligibility requirements, received a scholarship, and enrolled at a private Christian college eligible under the program.
- Davey declared a double major including pastoral ministries; the parties did not dispute that the pastoral ministries program was devotional theology.
- After learning scholarship funds could not be used for the pastoral ministries degree, Davey declined the scholarship and sued, alleging constitutional violations.
Issues
- Whether a state violates the Free Exercise Clause by excluding devotional theology degrees from an otherwise generally available college scholarship program.
- Whether the state’s interest in avoiding funding for clergy training or devotional instruction justifies the exclusion without triggering strict scrutiny applicable to discriminatory burdens on religious exercise.
Decision
- The Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and upheld the scholarship restriction.
- The Court held that Washington’s exclusion of devotional theology degrees from scholarship eligibility did not violate the Free Exercise Clause.
- The Court characterized the case as within the permissible “play in the joints” where state action may be allowed under the Establishment Clause but not required by the Free Exercise Clause.
- The Court rejected applying Lukumi strict-scrutiny analysis, concluding the program imposed a far milder burden than laws penalizing religious practice.
- The Court emphasized the policy did not prohibit religious exercise, impose criminal or civil sanctions, or broadly bar participation in public benefits; it declined to fund a limited category of instruction.
- The Court relied on a historic and substantial state interest in not subsidizing the training of clergy and found no indication of hostility toward religion.
- Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented, viewing the exclusion as discriminatory denial of a generally available benefit based on religious pursuit.
Legal Principles
- The Free Exercise Clause does not require a state to fund devotional religious instruction merely because it funds secular education.
- A state may draw a funding line excluding devotional theology or clergy-training instruction while otherwise permitting aid to be used at religious institutions and for nondevotional studies.
- When a program neither penalizes religious practice nor coerces individuals to abandon religious beliefs, and instead declines to subsidize a narrow category of religious instruction, heightened scrutiny applied to punitive or exclusionary regulation of religion may be inapplicable.
- States have a recognized historic interest in avoiding public financing of clergy training, and such an interest can support targeted exclusions without showing animus toward religion.
Conclusion
Washington could offer generally available college scholarships while excluding their use for devotional theology degrees; this limited funding restriction fell within permissible state discretion and did not violate the Free Exercise Clause.