Education and the Supreme Court

DESCRIPTION: Process of being trained by formal instruction and directed practice. Responsibility of the state, rather than the federal government, according to the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

SIGNIFICANCE: Although education is largely a state issue, the operation of educational systems must conform to constitutional mandates. When an education case involves a federal issue, particularly constitutional freedoms or rights, the Supreme Court may review the case.

Educational cases involve two major concepts: parens patriae and in loco parentis. The first of these, parens patriae, maintains that the state, as a parent to all persons within its boundaries, has the inherent authority to provide for its citizens’ individual and general welfare. By exercising police power, the state legislature can establish laws and regulations for the common good, including mandatory school attendance. The state also has the power to care for those legally incompetent to act on their own behalf, including minor children. Because the state’s interest may conflict with parental interest, this scheme often involves litigation surrounding compulsory education and curriculum. The second concept is that the school board and educational authorities have the power to act in the parents’ stead, in loco parentis, with the caveat that a rational or compelling state interest must support the state’s action before a child’s or parent’s rights can be restricted.

In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Supreme Court ruled that although the state has fairly extensive authority to protect children from parental abuse, it has only limited authority to interfere with parents’ control of their children’s education. However, in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), the Court stated that the family is not beyond regulation in the public interest and that the state as parens patriae may restrict the parents’ control by requiring school attendance or regulating or prohibiting child labor. In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Court said that parental power may be subject to limitation if it appears that parental decisions will jeopardize the health or safety of the child or have the potential to create significant social burdens. A common link in these cases is a judicial concern for the child, with the parental interest and the state interest secondary.

Challenges to compulsory attendance laws often concern whether parental judgment should prevail over that of the state. Parens patriae also extends to compulsory medical care over parental objection. This does not mean, however, that parental authority is restricted in all cases; at times, it is strengthened. In Yoder, the Court held that a state could not compel Amish children to attend public high school, balancing the state’s power to impose reasonable regulations against the fundamental rights and interests of individuals whose beliefs constitute their philosophical ideology. Moreover, where parents show that enforcement of compulsory education will endanger their religious beliefs, the state’s parens patriae power must yield to the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Religion and Public Schools

The First Amendment freedom of religion is found in two clauses: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. Thomas Jefferson referred to a ‘wall of separation between church and state’ in a 1802 letter. The essential meaning of this phrase is that education provided in public schools must be secular and without religious content or intent. An important element of the secular state contained in Jefferson’s words was a system of public education that could convey all necessary temporal knowledge but not impede religious freedom. The power of the state could not be used to inculcate religious beliefs, nor could the state’s authority to tax be used to assist religious training.

In Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), the Court held that the practice called “released time” violated the separation of church and state. Under this practice, schools set aside a period in which religious instruction was conducted in regular classrooms. Students not participating were required to go to other rooms where they received secular instruction. The practice was upheld, however, in Zorach v. Clauson (1952), when the religious training was held off school premises. In Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township (1947), the Court held that the Establishment Clause does not prohibit spending tax funds to pay bus fare for parochial school students, and in Board of Education v. Allen (1968), it held that the loan of textbooks to parochial school students did not violate the Establishment Clause.

The line between state neutrality to and support of religion is not easily drawn. In its analysis, the Court examines the purpose and primary effect of the legislation. If it is designed to advance or inhibit religion, then it exceeds the scope of the legislative power. In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Court clarified the criteria to be applied. The legislation must have a secular purpose and a primary secular effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion. In addition, the statute must not foster “excessive government entanglements” with religion. Decisions following Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) indicate a shift away from the Lemon test, with the Court increasingly relying on historical practices and traditions in evaluating religion-related cases.

In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the Court disallowed a nondenominational prayer recited daily in New York classrooms because the purpose of the recitation appeared to constitute government-sanctioned official prayers. Similarly, a daily reading of ten Bible verses and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer without comment were also held unconstitutional in Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) and Murray v. Curlett (1963), respectively. A nonsectarian prayer at a high school graduation was also held unconstitutional in Lee v. Weisman (1992) because the Court believed it exerted subtle coercive pressures where students had no other reasonable alternative.

In Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), the Court declared unconstitutional a statute that prohibited teaching from a book containing a chapter on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution because it conflicted with the religious interpretation of the Book of Genesis. The Court also found, in Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994), that a statute creating a special school district as a religious enclave also violated the Establishment Clause because it destroyed impartiality or neutrality toward religion. A noticeable shift in policy was apparent in Agostini v. Felton (1997), in which the Court admitted that some interaction between church and state is inevitable and tolerable as long as the entanglement is not “excessive.” It did not, however, define the parameters of that standard.

Several cases involving the Free Exercise Clause centered on mandatory participation in flag salute ceremonies. In Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), the Court upheld such a statute in the name of discipline, cohesion, and unity, largely because the outbreak of World War II in Europe had produced a high level of nationalism in the United States. In contrast, only three years later, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the Court ruled that the state had no power to require such a ritual. Remaining passive created no danger and did not interfere with the rights of others to participate. Moreover, compelling the ritual, according to the Court, violated First Amendment freedoms. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Court held that a state statute compelling school attendance to age sixteen unduly burdened the free exercise of religion of the Amish people and was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court was called upon again to rule in a case of separation of church and state related to education in 2022’s Carson v. Makin. In this instance, the Court ruled that regardless of how the funds would ultimately be used, states providing funding for any private schools must also provide funds for private religious schools as part of voucher programs. That same year, the decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District saw the Court argue that a high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field following the conclusion of games was within his First Amendment rights to do so. Lower court decisions applying Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) have expanded protections for religious expression by public school employees.

Race and Education

The most notable civil rights case was Brown v. Board of Education (1954), in which the Court mandated school desegregation on equal protection grounds. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court upheld segregation, stating that separate but equal public facilities did not violate anyone’s rights. In Brown, however, the Court ruled that separate facilities deprive individuals of equal protection of the laws and generate feelings of inferiority, producing an overall detrimental effect. Ruling that separate facilities are inherently unequal, the Court ordered the integration of all schools, creating a unitary school system. Desegregation was to proceed “with all deliberate speed.”

Throughout the 1960s, however, states struggled with implementing integration. The Court examined both de jure and de facto segregation. De jure (by law) segregation is mandated by law or by the deliberate act of school officials and was more typically found in the South. De facto segregation results from residential housing patterns and was more typically found in the North. The Court’s ruling in Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1 (1973) was regarded as a signal indicating its approval of districtwide desegregation in northern school districts. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Court also ruled that busing to overcome racial segregation is a judicially acceptable remedy for de facto segregation.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, ruling that race-conscious admissions policies violated the Equal Protection Clause, overturning decades of legal precedent.

Rights of Teachers and Students

In the 1940s and 1950s, loyalty oaths for educational personnel were not unusual, although their provisions differed widely. The Court has upheld loyalty oaths provided that they are not so vague that their meaning is uncertain, and oath takers could be accused of perjury if they did not understand their implications. Public secondary school teachers do not have unlimited liberty or authority to determine course structure or content. To plead denial of academic freedom, teachers must first buttress their cases with some substantive claim under the First Amendment or a similar provision. In general, the courts have developed a flexible rule that balances the public’s interests against the private interests of the employee. Due to their sensitive position in the classroom, however, teachers must be held accountable for certain activities, and their rights are not absolute and can be overcome if the public necessity is great enough.

The case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) established some guidelines by which to reconcile the constitutional rights of students and the power of school officials. The case involved three students who wore black armbands to school in silent protest against the government’s Vietnam War policy in violation of the school’s prohibition against the wearing of armbands. When the students were asked to remove the armbands, they refused and were suspended. The Court observed that wearing armbands was “pure speech” totally divorced from actual or potentially disruptive conduct. The desire to avoid discomfort or unpleasantness accompanying an unpopular viewpoint is not a sufficient reason for prohibiting the expression of opinion. The Court held, however, that schools may regulate the content of school-sponsored newspapers when the speech is part of the curriculum in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) or when the speech is lewd, indecent, or offensive to both students and teachers in Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser (1986).

In Davis v. Monroe County (1999), the Court held that schools found to be “deliberately indifferent” to a student’s claims of sexual harassment can be liable for monetary damages in cases in which the behavior is so severe, pervasive, and offensive that it denies its victims equal access to education.

Several Court decisions beginning in 2020 impacted the landscape of education law. LGBTQ educators’ rights were bolstered by the Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), in which the majority decided that employer discrimination against LGBTQ employees, including termination, is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VII. However, in this case, the Court did not specify whether employers could make decisions involving LGBTQ employees based on religious grounds, which meant that this protection for LGBTQ people teaching at religious schools, in particular, remained in question. In Luna Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools (2023), the Court unanimously held that a student with disabilities could pursue a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act without first exhausting administrative remedies under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, broadening legal avenues for disability-related education claims. In Department of Education v. California (2025), a 5–4 decision, the Court issued a temporary stay allowing the federal government to suspend certain education-related grants while litigation proceeded.

Bibliography

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Graham, Edward. “Supreme Court Decision Paves Way for Public Funds to Flow to Religious Schools.” National Education Association, 21 July 2022, www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/supreme-court-decision-paves-way-public-funds-flow-religious-schools. Accessed 11 Apr. 2026.

Howe, Amy. “Justices Side with High School Football Coach Who Prayed on the Field with Students.” SCOTUSblog, 27 June 2022, www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/justices-side-with-high-school-football-coach-who-prayed-on-the-field-with-students/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2026.

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Quinn, Melissa. “Supreme Court Sides with High School Football Coach Who Lost His Job for Praying after Games.” CBS News, 27 June 2022, www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/supreme-court-joe-kennedy-high-school-football-coach-school-prayer-case. Accessed 11 Apr. 2026.

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Totenberg, Nina, and Christina Gatti. “Supreme Court Sides with Administration over Education Department Grants.” NPR, 4 Apr. 2025, www.npr.org/2025/04/04/nx-s1-5345607/supreme-court-education-department. Accessed 11 Apr. 2026.

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