John Shabaz of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in Madison ruled June 23 that a Wisconsin program subsidizing Internet access at schools, including religious ones, is constitutional and not in violation of the First Amendment’s mandate to separate church and state.
Shabaz said the state subsidy was permissible because money is sent to the connections provider, not to the schools themselves, the June 30 New York Times reported. He considered unconstitutional a related grant-giving program to religious schools that set up access on their own beyond the state program as overstepping the advancement of religion prohibitions,.
The original suit against the state was filed in November 1998 by the Freedom from Religion Foundation .
Posted July 5, 1999.