Agostini v. Felton
The Supreme Court overturned its own 1985 ruling in Aguilar v. Felton, holding that public school teachers can once again provide federally funded remedial classes inside religious schools without violating the Constitution's ban on establishing religion.
The decision freed New York City from a 12-year-old court order that had forced it to spend over $100 million bussing students off-campus or parking mobile classrooms outside religious schools, and it signaled a broader shift toward allowing more government aid to reach religious institutions as long as the aid is neutral and reaches them only through private choices.
“We therefore overrule Ball and Aguilar to the extent those decisions are inconsistent with our current understanding of the Establishment Clause.”
The Court's explicit statement that it was overruling its 1985 precedents.
How it got here: A federal district court denied the school board's motion to lift the 1985 injunction; the Second Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court agreed to review that denial.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Since 1966, New York City used federal Title I funds to send public school teachers into religious schools to tutor low-income, struggling students. In 1985 the Supreme Court ruled in Aguilar v. Felton that this violated the Establishment Clause, forcing the city to instead teach these children in vans, leased sites, or public school buildings at great extra expense. A decade later, the school board and parents asked a federal court to lift the resulting injunction.
The question before the Court
Could New York City send public school teachers into religious schools to give free tutoring to poor students without violating the separation of church and state?
Why it matters
School districts nationwide that had spent years and tens of millions of dollars complying with Aguilar could resume sending publicly paid tutors directly into religious school classrooms, saving money for more student services. The ruling also loosened the constitutional test for other forms of government aid to religious institutions, making similar programs easier to defend in later disputes.
What changes now
The case was sent back to the district court with instructions to lift the 1985 injunction, allowing New York City to resume placing publicly paid tutors inside religious schools under the same safeguards described in the opinion. This is a final merits ruling, not a temporary order, and it directly overrules Aguilar v. Felton and part of School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, meaning similar Title I programs elsewhere no longer needed to operate off religious school campuses to satisfy the Constitution.
What this does not decide
The Court stressed its ruling is limited to the specific Title I program before it, with its particular safeguards (public control of funds, secular-only instruction, no schoolwide aid), and does not hold that all government aid delivered inside religious schools is automatically constitutional. It also declined to say lower courts may on their own conclude older Supreme Court precedents are impliedly overruled without the Court saying so.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Souter
“But constitutional lines are the price of constitutional government.”Souter's closing defense of the line the Court had drawn against aid to religious schools.
Justice Souter argued the majority misread Zobrest and Witters, insisting those cases involved narrow, individualized aid unlike Title I's broad, school-based program, and that placing full-time public teachers inside religious schools still creates a real risk of religious inculcation and a symbolic union between church and state. He would have kept Aguilar and Ball intact as a principled, workable line against direct government aid to religious education.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg objected primarily on procedural grounds, arguing that Rule 60(b)(5) was never meant to let litigants relitigate a Supreme Court judgment years later just because some Justices suggested a precedent should be reconsidered. She warned the ruling improperly turned a routine procedural rule into an all-purpose vehicle for rehearing settled constitutional questions outside the normal channels for overruling precedent.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied Rule 60(b)(5), which lets a party escape an old court order when there has been a significant change in law or facts, and it first ruled that no change in facts (the added costs were foreseen) justified relief on its own.
- The Court then examined whether its Establishment Clause cases since 1985 had undermined the reasoning of Aguilar and its companion case, Ball, which had assumed that any public school teacher working inside a religious school would inevitably end up promoting religion and create a symbolic bond between government and religion.
- Relying on Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist. (a case allowing a publicly paid sign-language interpreter into a religious school) and Witters v. Washington Dept. of Servs. for Blind (upholding aid to a student who chose to use it for religious training), the Court concluded that courts should no longer presume public employees will inject religion into their work simply because they are on religious school grounds.
- The Court also concluded that aid distributed under neutral, secular eligibility rules that reach religious and nonreligious students alike does not count as an unconstitutional subsidy of religion, even when it is used inside a religious school building.
- Applying these updated principles, the Court found that New York's tutoring program no longer created forbidden indoctrination, a symbolic union of church and state, or the kind of excessive monitoring-related entanglement that doomed the program in 1985, so the legal foundation of Aguilar and part of Ball no longer held up.
- Because the change in law was genuine and not just a shift in the Justices' personal views, the Court held that stare decisis did not bar overruling those decisions, and that the school board was entitled to relief from the old injunction under Rule 60(b)(5).
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Overrules Aguilar v. Felton (473 U.S. 402)
The 1985 ruling barring public school teachers from teaching in religious schools was overturned as no longer consistent with current law.
Overrules School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball (473 U.S. 373)
The portion striking down the similar Shared Time program was overruled as inconsistent with later Establishment Clause cases.