Government Aid to Segregated Private Schools, Norwood v. Harrison

[A18]

Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455 (1973)

A three-judge District Court sustained the validity of a Mississippi statutory program, begun in 1940, under which textbooks are purchased by the State and lent to students in both public and private schools, without reference to whether any participating private school has racially discriminatory policies. The number of private secular schools in Mississippi, with a virtually all-white student population, has greatly increased in recent years.

Held: Free textbooks, like tuition grants directed to students in private schools, are a form of tangible financial assistance benefiting the schools themselves, and the State's constitutional obligation requires it to avoid not only operating the old dual system of racially segregated schools but also providing tangible aid to schools that practice racial or other invidious discrimination.

[Emsworth]

Unsound. Providing funding to private schools does not deny anyone "equal protection of the laws." If the state (for example) funded white-only private schools, but not private schools for other races, then it would have violated the Constitution. But the state did no such thing; it provided funding to all private schools on an equal basis.