Church vs State

[SAump]

Originally Posted by Matt

Judging by the name TAPPS (I'm using that as my defense later,) the delineation is not religion per se, but whether a school is public or not. If this is the case, then the minister really doesn't have much shot at a case based on equal protection--funding source does not make one a member of a protected class.

OTOH, if the correlation between a schools being private and schools being religious is close to 1, then the case could be raised that it is de facto delineation based on religion, and he might have a bit higher chance at succeeding. However, I don't see a court stating that access to particular interscholastic opponents is a right or privilege under the 14th Amendment.

They want access to the playing fields funded by their taxpayers. Nobody cares who the opponent is, just that they show up on time. They want access to $$$ long denied them too. Similar to reverse discrimination challenge filed by white people to end college entrance exam requirements and system of racial quotas based on local demographic data. Support taxation of religious school "parents" without equal representation? Seperate but equal? Yada yada yada.

Many private institutions of higher learning across Texas are fundamentally Judeo-Christian based. Here is a directory, http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__S...rsity/Private/. Names listed on these pages support popularity of privately-run religious institutions of higher learning. Many offer baseball scholarships to deserving young students from public schools.

[Andy]

Since nobody has mentioned Arizona yet, I will chime in.

Private Schools can join the Arizona Interscolastic Association, by applying and meeting the requirements. Schools are placed in a classification by enrollment size every two years and are allowed to petition to be moved up or down.

There is one small catholic school in Phoenix that routinely petitions up to the highest classification (5A, division 1) in all sports every time. They have been very successful, winning several state titles in football, basketball, and baseball over the last several years.

The big issue that is going on now is in the 2A class. Most of the private schools in the metro Phoenix and Tucson areas are placed in 2A due to student enrollment. Most of the public schools in this class are from small town, rural areas. A great majority of the state championships in this class have been won by the metro area private schools in the last few years. The public schools are complaining that the metro schoos have more population to draw from, better opportunities for outside training, more athletes being able to "specialize" in a single sport, etc...

The public schools are pushing for seperate state championships for the public and private schools in this class. It will be interesting to see how this plays out....