Bush administration, pro-voucher groups Bombard High Court with briefs in Ohio case. (People & Events).

The Bush administration and an array of allied religious and political groups have filed legal briefs with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to uphold voucher aid to religious schools.

The administration brief, filed last month in a case from Cleveland, argues that voucher subsidies for church schools do not violate the separation of church and state. The administration's stand comes as no surprise. Bush supported vouchers during his campaign for president and last year directed the solicitor general's office to file a brief asking the high court to take the Ohio case.

Nearly two dozen organizations that support religious school vouchers have sided with the Bush administration and filed similar friend-of-the-court briefs.

Several Religious Right groups are among the throng. For example, TV preacher Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice has joined forces with radio counselor James C. Dobson's Focus on the Family to back vouchers.

Recently, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, a voucher front group run from Marquette University, placed an ad in The Washington Post hailing the diversity among the groups filing pro-voucher briefs. In fact, there is very little diversity. Most are the same anti-separationist organizations that have opposed public education for years.

A good example is the REACH Alliance, a Pennsylvania-based coalition that consists of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the Pennsylvania Knights of Columbus and the Pennsylvania Family Institute, among other groups.

Another organization that filed, the American Civil Rights Union, is a right-wing legal group formed by several highprofile political figures, including former attorney general Edwin Meese III; William Bradford Reynolds, an assistant attorney general under Meese; failed Supreme Court candidate Robert Bork; right-wing columnist Linda Chavez and Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, former editor of the Readers Digest.

Other groups filing briefs include: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, the Claremont Institute, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the National Association for Independent Schools, the Center for Educational Reform, Vermonters for Better Education, the CATO Institute, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Rutherford Institute, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the Christian Legal Society.

In addition, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention joined forces with the Family Research Council and the National Association of Evangelicals to file a pro-voucher brief.

Several states also filed briefs in support of vouchers, including the attorney general of Wisconsin and the governor of New Mexico. In addition, a joint brief was flied by the attorneys general of the states of Florida, Alabama, Delaware, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina.

As Church & State went to press, Americans United's Legal Department was working in coalition with allied education and civil liberties organizations on a brief that urges the justices to strike down vouchers as a violation of church-state separation. AU Legal Director Ayesha Khan helped draft the brief and shape the constitutional argument.

The case, Zelman v. Harris-Simmons, will be argued before the high court Feb. 20. A decision is expected by early July. For more details, see "Supreme Test," November 2001 Church & State.