Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District

Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 18, 1993, ruled (5–4) that under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a public school board was required to provide the on-site services of a sign-language interpreter to a hearing-impaired student in a private religious school. The court rejected arguments that it violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

The case centred on James Zobrest, a deaf student in Tucson, Arizona. For several grades he had attended public school, and during that time the Catalina Foothills School District board, in compliance with the IDEA, had provided a sign-language interpreter. However, in the ninth grade he switched to a private Roman Catholic high school. When Zobrest’s parents asked public officials to continue to supply their son with a sign-language interpreter, the school board refused the request, believing that it was a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which generally prohibits the government from establishing, advancing, or giving favour to any religion.

After the parents filed suit, the federal district court in Arizona held that furnishing a sign-language interpreter was in violation of the First Amendment because the interpreter—who would have been required to sign religious doctrine—would have had the effect of “promoting James’s religious development at government expense.” A divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s decision. It held that providing a sign-language interpreter would have failed the so-called Lemon test. In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) the Supreme Court established a three-rule test for laws that involved religious establishment, one of which forbids advancing or inhibiting a religion. The Ninth Court decided that the interpreter would have been the instrumentality conveying the religious message and that by placing the interpreter in the religious school, the local board would have appeared to be sponsoring the school’s activities. The court pointed out that although denying the interpreter placed a burden on the parents’ right to free exercise of religion, the denial was justified because the government had a compelling state interest in ensuring that the First Amendment was not violated.

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On February 24, 1993, the case was argued before the Supreme Court. Chief Justice William Rehnquist authored the majority’s opinion, in which he ruled that the service of a sign-language interpreter in that case was “part of a general government program that distributes benefits neutrally to any child qualifying as disabled under the IDEA,” without regard to whether the school attended was sectarian or nonsectarian, public or private. Rehnquist added that by giving the parents the freedom to choose a school, the IDEA ensured that a state-funded interpreter would be in a parochial school only because of the parents’ decision. His opinion thus determined that because “the IDEA creates no financial incentive for parents to choose a sectarian school, an interpreter’s presence there cannot be attributed to state decisionmaking.”

Rehnquist’s opinion further held that the only economic benefit the religious school might have received would have been indirect and that would have occurred only if the school made a profit on each student, if the student would not have attended the school without the interpreter, and if the student’s seat would have remained unfilled. In addition, Rehnquist decided that aiding the student and his parents did not amount to a direct subsidy of the religious school because the student, not the school, was the primary beneficiary of the IDEA. Moreover, Rehnquist was convinced that the task of a sign-language interpreter was different from that of a teacher or guidance counselor insofar as an interpreter would not add or subtract from the pervasively sectarian environment in which the student’s parents had chosen to place him. The Supreme Court thus ruled that there was no violation of the establishment clause, and the decision of the Ninth Circuit was reversed.

Zobrest is a significant case because it was among the first that marked a shift in the court toward interpreting the establishment clause to allow government-paid services for students who attend religiously affiliated nonpublic schools. Similar rulings followed, notably Agostini v. Felton (1997), in which the court held that remedial services, which were financed by federal funds under Title I, could be provided in parochial schools.