Tilton, Hunt and Roemer

These cases deal with general state aid to higher education – things like grants and state subsidized bonds to finance facilities on campus.  Direct funding (i.e., not vouchers or tax benefits to private individuals)

 As the plurality indicates in Roemer, the court seems to have imposed two requirements (casebook p. 1777):

            1)  no aid to institutions that are “pervasively sectarian” i.e. institutions that are too religious (secular activities cannot be separated from sectarian ones)

            2)    only secular activities can be funded

For example, in Hunt (p. 1775), the court upheld public financing of dining hall facilities at a non-pervasively sectarian Baptist College. Suppose instead of a luke-warm, kinda sorta Baptist College, the funds were to be used to finance a dining hall at an on-fire Baptist College such as Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.What is the difference between the respective dining halls of the two schools?

See Larson v. Valente (“one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another”).  P. 1697

Mitchell v. Helms at P. 1761 (plurality opinion, but probably now the law).