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August 20, 2002 Page 2 high water marks of the doctrine. The Court concluded that the presumptions upon which the prior cases had been based were no longer valid. Agostini permitted neutral and secular assistance in the form of remedial instructional programs to be carried out within parochial grade schools. These programs constituted direct aid to religious institutions but were considered neutral and secular in purpose and effect with only an incidental and permissible effect of advancing religion. Similarly, in 2000, the Supreme Court applied this same rationale to overturn another one of its prior cases. In Mitchell v. Helms, the Court allowed the provision of publicly funded instructional materials, supplemental aids, and other neutral and secular assistance to parochial schools. Justice Thomas, writing for the plurality of the Helms court, delivered a scathing critique of the doctrine of pervasive sectarianism, pointing out its origins and uses over the years in the service of bigotry and discrimination against certain faiths. On June 27, 2002, the United States Supreme Court handed down its most recent decision clarifying the ground rules for church interaction with state. (See Executive Summary attached) Zelman v. Simmons-Harris upheld the Cleveland voucher program because it was a governmental program . With a valid secular purpose, which was neutral with respect to religion, . Which was applied on a neutral basis with respect to religion, and Which provided aid only indirectly to religious institutions through the genuine private choices of a broad array of individual recipients who directly received the governmental aid. In such a program, the Court held, the use to which government money may ultimately be put may not be attributed to the government, nor can any usage be properly interpreted as governmental endorsement of religion, because the independent private choices of individual recipients break the chain of causality. The Zelman case makes it clear that in the context of indirect aid such as this, the character of the ultimate recipients of the institution of the aid and, particularly whether they are secular, religious, religiously affiliated, sectarian or pervasively sectarian, is irrelevant Nothing demonstrates more clearly the irrelevance of the "pervasively sectarian" doctrine in indirect aid cases than the fact that the Court in Zelman completely abandoned even the language of "pervasively sectarian". In the approving and concurring opinions, there are well over 100 uses of variations on the word "religious" and not a single instance where the term "pervasively sectarian" is used. The Court took great pains to distinguish indirect aid cases, in which the religious character of recipients of indirect aid is completely irrelevant, from direct aid cases such as those discussed in Agostini and Helms. In direct aid situations, by contrast, a