## Facts

- Federal Chapter 2 funds were distributed through state and local agencies to lend educational materials and equipment to public and private elementary and secondary schools for programs required to be “secular, neutral, and nonideological.”
- In Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, roughly 30% of Chapter 2 resources were allocated to private schools, most of them religiously affiliated.
- Public-school parents sued local and state officials, alleging the program’s provision of materials and equipment to religious schools violated the Establishment Clause by supplying direct aid to “pervasively sectarian” institutions.
- The district court initially found the program unconstitutional under Establishment Clause precedent distinguishing permissible textbook loans from impermissible in-kind aid.
- On reconsideration before a different district judge, the court upheld the program in light of later decisions allowing certain aid that reaches religious schools.
- The court of appeals held the program unconstitutional, reasoning that intervening precedent had not displaced earlier cases invalidating similar in-kind aid.
- The Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether a federal program that lends secular educational materials and equipment to religious schools, allocated by religion-neutral criteria, violates the Establishment Clause as applied.
2. Whether prior Establishment Clause cases barring certain forms of in-kind aid to “pervasively sectarian” schools control, or have been limited by later decisions emphasizing neutrality and effects.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the Chapter 2 lending program, as applied, did not violate the Establishment Clause.
- A four-Justice plurality concluded that neutrality in eligibility and allocation, combined with secular-use restrictions, defeated claims of state-sponsored religious indoctrination.
- A controlling concurrence agreed in the judgment on narrower grounds, emphasizing safeguards, the character of the aid, and the absence of evidence that the materials were diverted to religious use.
- The dissent would have held the program unconstitutional as an impermissible direct subsidy that risks supporting religious instruction and requires intrusive monitoring.

## Legal Principles

- Government aid that reaches religious schools is more likely to be constitutional when eligibility and allocation are based on religion-neutral criteria and the aid is secular in content.
- Under the effects and entanglement inquiry, the central concerns include whether the program results in governmental indoctrination, whether it defines recipients by reference to religion, and whether it creates excessive entanglement through monitoring.
- The mere possibility that aid could be used for religious instruction is less likely to invalidate a neutral program absent proof of diversion or a monitoring regime that itself creates excessive entanglement.
- The “pervasively sectarian” label does not require categorical exclusion from otherwise neutral aid programs under the approach applied by the Court.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld a program lending secular educational materials and equipment to religious schools because the aid was distributed on neutral criteria, constrained to secular use, and lacked evidence of diversion to religious instruction, narrowing the force of earlier decisions that treated comparable in-kind aid as unconstitutional.


Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U.S. 793 (2000)