The Freedom From Religion Foundation is disappointed over a recent judicial ruling that nudges open the door toward undercutting a major victory it obtained for New Jersey taxpayers a few years ago.
FFRF, a national state/church watchdog, and local member David Steketee filed suit in December 2015 seeking to stop Morris County’s practice of regularly issuing historic preservation grants to churches. The county had awarded more than $4.6 million in tax dollars to 12 churches prior to the lawsuit. The complicated case, with many judicial maneuverings, resulted in a strong unanimous decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court in April 2018, ruling the public funding of churches unconstitutional. The county sought to appeal that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied its petition in March 2019.
However, local churches did not give up in their efforts to benefit from tax dollars. The Mendham Methodist Church and The Zion Lutheran Church Long Valley filed a new lawsuit in 2023. That case urged the U.S. District Court of New Jersey to order Morris County to resume granting funds to churches. Dishearteningly, U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin has provisionally ruled in favor of the churches. Her preliminary injunction allows churches to request historic preservation grants from Morris County as the case proceeds. Padin took umbrage at the New Jersey constitutional provision that prohibits state financing of religion, contending that it is overbroad.
“The Religious Aid Clause does not ‘zero in on any particular “essentially religious”’ aspect of funding,” the ruling says. “Therefore, Rule 5.6.4 is not narrowly tailored.”
The injunction prohibits Morris County from “enforcing Rule 5.6.4 to exclude plaintiffs from eligibility for funding, or applying for funding, from the Morris County Historic Preservation Trust Fund, pending a final resolution of this matter.”
The decision threatens FFRF’s prior state court victory. However, FFRF legal counsel emphasize that the ruling is not final and does not achieve the larger goal of the churches to strike down the “no aid” provision of the New Jersey Constitution. The New Jersey attorney general may appeal this decision or it may continue to defend on the merits as the case continues.
“FFRF is disappointed with the preliminary ruling by the district court judge despite its temporary nature and its limited reach,” says FFRF Senior Counsel Sam Grover. “FFRF maintains that the current rule is, in fact, constitutional, given New Jersey’s well-established historic interest in avoiding compelled taxpayer support of churches. FFRF briefed the district court on this point and will continue to monitor the case, as it moves through this court and through the appeals process, for additional opportunities to advocate on behalf of the taxpayers we represented in the prior lawsuit.”
New Jersey’s Religious Aid Clause reflects a historic and substantial interest in not taxing citizens to fund the building and maintenance of places of worship, FFRF has asserted in its amicus brief in the case. “The ‘unambiguous and unbroken history’ of New Jersey’s Religious Aid Clause, which dates to the Founding Era, conclusively demonstrates that prohibiting the use of taxpayer funds to support the building or maintenance of places of worship has ‘become part of the fabric of our society,’” states the brief.
And if Morris County is permitted to resume its prior and profligate church-funding practices, the inevitable result will be inequities in the financial distributions enjoyed by different religious factions. Records obtained by FFRF in its prior lawsuit challenging Morris County’s grant program demonstrate that the only religious groups who benefited from the county’s program from 2003 to 2015 were Christian sects. None of the county’s minority religious groups had projects funded under its prior program, despite much of the funding being earmarked for the type of routine property repair (like fixing windows or roofs) that burdens all property owners.
New Jersey’s Religious Aid Clause was also designed to forestall a second form of religious controversy. In order to assess grant applications from churches, Morris County was often put in the position of determining whether a proposed project would further a religious organization’s religious mission. There is simply no way for the county to evaluate such project proposals without becoming entangled in religious affairs, as even Judge Padin admits.
“I can only quote the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, who famously observed, ‘When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one,’” says FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “Many people fled to North America precisely to avoid being taxed and tithed to support state religions they did not adhere to.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a state/church watchdog with over 40,000 nonreligious members nationwide, including more than 800 members in New Jersey.
