Columbia Union College wins its case against Maryland
by Dennis Hokama

In a 40-page opinion issued on Thursday, August 17, U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis in Baltimore, declared Columbia Union College eligible to receive state funds. This reverses a decision he made earlier. The latest decision will require Maryland to begin providing direct subsidies to CUC over the objections of state officials. Maryland had argued that such an action would violate the Constitution's ban against state-established religion. This decision is simply the latest skirmish in a battle that CUC has been waging against the State of Maryland ever since it applied for the Sellinger Program in 1990 and was ruled ineligible. The lawsuit was initiated in 1996. Maryland is considering an appeal. Brooke A. Masters, a Washington Post staff writer, posted the story on August 19, 2000.

Maryland's Sellinger Program provides $40 million a year to more than a dozen private colleges and universities in the state. CUC is now eligible for about $800,000 annually, equivalent to about 5 percent of its budget. Although several Catholic institutions have participated, state officials ruled that CUC's program was much more "pervasively sectarian" and therefore did not qualify. The "pervasively sectarian" test is based on a 1976 Supreme Court decision.

CUC's position has been that, despite the 1976 Supreme Court decision, it shouldn't matter how religious a school's curriculum is, since equal protection under the law is guaranteed by the First Amendment's "free exercise of religion" clause. This freedom, CUC argues, should not be nullified by the Amendment's ban on the "establishment of religion" (See Adventist Today, Vol 7. No. 5). U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis in Baltimore had ruled initially that CUC was not eligible for state funds because it is "pervasively sectarian," or too religiously focused, the key test under a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision. When CUC appealed the Garbis ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the burden of proof lay with Garbis, and thus ordered him to reconsider by doing an actual analysis of CUC's program content.

While Garbis' investigation was in progress, the legal climate changed this June with the Supreme Court's 6 to 3 ruling that Louisiana parochial schools were eligible for federal education funds for purchasing computers. In that decision, four justices advocated scrapping the 1976 "sectarian" test, thus making most aid to religious schools legal so long as it has non religious content and is also available to non-religious schools. But Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen G. Breyer, who made up the rest of the majority, did not go that far. They also said they would view direct payments differently than in-kind aid.

The Maryland case is therefore legally significant, because it involves direct payments to a college rather than funds for equipment, and if appealed, might force the Supreme Court to draw yet another line in the sand. This has obvious implications for other conservative religious schools seeking government aid, and the school voucher movement, legal analysts from both camps concede. In his opinion, Garbis said he decided to abide by the "pervasively sectarian" test because there were not five votes to overrule it, but interpreted it in a way that was favorable to CUC. Garbis noted that only 90 of the 535 courses outside of religion had explicit religious statements in their syllabi.

http://www.atoday.com/magazine/archive/2000/sepoct2000/news/cuc.shtml