First Amendment Encyclopedia website gives overview of 1997 case Agostini v. Felton.
"RACHEL AGOSTINI, et al. v. BETTY-LOUISE FELTON et al., 521 U.S. 203 (1997)," The First Amendment Encyclopedia, 2020, accessed April 6, 2022
Argued: April 15, 1997
Decided: June 23, 1997
Decided by: Rehnquist Court, 1996
Action: Reversed and remanded. Petitioning party received a favorable disposition.
Facts/Syllabus:
In Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U. S. 402, 413, this Court held that New York City's program that sent public school teachers into parochial schools to provide remedial education to disadvantaged children pursuant to Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 necessitated an excessive entanglement of church and state and violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. On remand, the District Court entered a permanent injunction reflecting that ruling. Some 10 years later, petitioners-the parties bound by the injunction-filed motions in the same court seeking relief from the injunction's operation under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5). They emphasized the significant costs of complying with Aguilar and the assertions of five Justices in Board of Ed. of Kiryas Joel Village School Dist. v. Grumet, 512 U. S. 687, that Aguilar should be reconsidered, and argued that relief was proper under Rule 60(b)(5) and Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U. S. 367, 388, because Aguilar cannot be squared with this Court's intervening Establishment Clause jurisprudence and is no longer good law.