Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet
Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, 512 U.S. 687 (1994), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of a school district created with boundaries that matched that of a religious community – in this case, the Satmar community of Kiryas Joel, New York.[1] The court, in an opinion by Justice Souter, held that the creation of a school district unit of government designed to coincide with the neighborhood boundaries of a religious group constitutes an unconstitutional aid to religion.Souter concluded that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion": "There is more than a fine line between the voluntary association that leads to a political community comprising people who share a common religious faith, and the forced separation that occurs when the government draws explicit political boundaries on the basis of peoples' faith.Justice Scalia, in his dissent, acknowledged that the residents of this district are Satmar Hasidic Jews, but noted of the Satmar community: [A]ll its residents also wear unusual dress, have unusual civic customs, and have not much to do with people who are culturally different from them ... On what basis does Justice Souter conclude that it is the theological distinctiveness rather than the cultural distinctiveness that was the basis for New York State's decision?The majority, Scalia asserted, would "laud this humanitarian legislation if all of the distinctiveness of the students of Kiryas Joel were attributable to the fact that their parents were nonreligious commune dwellers, or American Indians, or Gypsies," and concluded that "creation of a special, one-culture school district for the benefit of those children would pose no problem.