Johnson v. Charles City Community Schools Bd. of Educ., 83-493

• Decision Date: 22 May 1985
• Docket Number: No. 83-493,83-493
• Citation: Johnson v. Charles City Community Schools Bd. of Educ., 368 N.W.2d 74 (Iowa 1985)
• Parties: 25 Ed. Law Rep. 524 Rev. Randy JOHNSON, Mr. & Mrs. Richard Rutherford, Mr. & Mrs. Fred Pruessner, Mr. & Mrs. Martin Miller, Mrs. Mary Drake, Mrs. Gail Vosburgh, Mrs. Henrietta Santee, Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Callow, Mr. & Mrs. Frank Marion, Mr. & Mrs. Gary Nelson, Mr. & Mrs. Michael Hoffman, Mr. & Mrs. Richard Hoffler, and Calvary Baptist Church, Appellants, v. CHARLES CITY COMMUNITY SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION, Iowa State Board of Public Instruction, Robert Benton, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Klett, District Secretary for Charles City Community Schools Board of Education, Ronald Noah, Floyd County Attorney, Philip N. Norland, Worth County Attorney, Richard N. Tompkins, Cerro Gordo County Attorney, and William A. Heintz, Chickasaw County Attorney, Appellees. Fred M. PRUESSNER and Donna Pruessner, Rev. A.C. Wegner, Jr., Martin Miller and Emily Miller, Dallas Michelson and Jean Michelson, Robert J. Crooks and Sue Crooks, and Gail Vosburgh, Appellants, v. Dr. Robert BENTON, Superintendent of Public Instruction and State Board of Public Instruction, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 74

368 N.W.2d 74

25 Ed. Law Rep. 524

Rev. Randy JOHNSON, Mr. & Mrs. Richard Rutherford, Mr. & Mrs. Fred Pruessner, Mr. & Mrs. Martin Miller, Mrs. Mary Drake, Mrs. Gail Vosburgh, Mrs. Henrietta Santee, Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Callow, Mr. & Mrs. Frank Marion, Mr. & Mrs. Gary Nelson, Mr. & Mrs. Michael Hoffman, Mr. & Mrs. Richard Hoffler, and Calvary Baptist Church, Appellants, v.CHARLES CITY COMMUNITY SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION, Iowa State Board of Public Instruction, Robert Benton, State Superintendent of Public InstructionMark Klett, District Secretary for Charles City Community Schools Board of Education, Ronald Noah, Floyd CountyAttorney, Philip N. Norland, Worth CountyAttorney, Richard N. Tompkins, Cerro Gordo CountyAttorney, and William A. Heintz, Chickasaw CountyAttorney, Appellees.

Fred M. PRUESSNER and Donna Pruessner, Rev. A.C. Wegner, Jr., Martin Miller and Emily Miller, Dallas Michelson and Jean Michelson, Robert J. Crooks and Sue Crooks, and Gail Vosburgh, Appellants, v.Dr. Robert BENTON, Superintendent of Public Instruction and State Board of Public Instruction, Appellees.

No. 83-493.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

May 22, 1985.

Rehearing Denied July 26, 1985.

Craig R. Hastings, Ames, and Daniel John Loomis and Charles E. Craze of Gibbs & Craze Co., L.P.A., Cleveland, Ohio, for appellants.

Thomas J. Miller, Atty. Gen., Merle Wilna Fleming, Asst. Atty. Gen., Ronald K. Noah, Floyd Co. Atty., William A. Heintz, Chickasaw Co. Atty., and Judith O'Donohoe, Charles City, for appellees.

Considered en banc.

HARRIS, Justice.

Plaintiffs are the pastor and certain members of a fundamentalist Baptist church in Charles City.The controversy arose following their organization of a parochial school.The parents were charged with violating Iowa's compulsory attendance law, Iowa Code section 299.1(1983).The section is quite typical in that it places the sanction for failure to attend on the parent rather than the child.The parents here responded by bringing two separate proceedings.One was a declaratory judgment action which challenged our statutory education requirements, not only the compulsory attendance statute but also certain reporting requirements in chapter 299.The second response was to apply to the state board of public instruction for relief under section 299.24, popularly called the Amish exception.After the administrative application was denied, the plaintiffs filed for judicial review under section 17A.19.The declaratory judgment action and judicial review proceedings were consolidated for trial in district court and for this appeal.

The district court denied declaratory relief and affirmed on the administrative appeal.We agree with plaintiffs' contention that the religious freedoms guaranteed them under the first amendment entitle them to educate their children at the private religious school they have established.The same guarantees accord them the right to operate the school with minimal necessary supervision by the state.A two-fold difficulty with the appeal is that (1)we are not presented with any developed minimal necessary standards, and (2) their absence is not an issue on appeal.The assignments of error address the state's fundamental authority to set any educational standards for private religious schools.Because we reject plaintiffs' assignments of error we affirm the trial court.

Both challenges are rooted in the plaintiffs' deeply held religious beliefs.They perceive their school, which they describe as their "week day educational ministry," to be an integral part of the exercise of their religion.It is named Calvary Baptist Christian Academy.

When it was set up in the fall of 1980 the school was not incorporated separately from the church.The curriculum chosen, the Accelerated Christian Education Program, has not as yet been challenged as inadequate by any state authorities.At the bottom of this litigation is the fact that plaintiffs are unwilling to submit to any state inquiry on the matter.In their view, the educational content and process of their school, because it is so central to their religion, is not properly subject to state oversight.The appellants state their requirements for their program as follows:

[C]ertain requirements had to be met by the students, their parents, and staff....First of all, the pastor had to be the earthly head of the ministry just as with the bus ministry, Sunday school, or any other ministry of the church.Second, all of the supervisors and assistants had to be members of the church to assure their agreement with the church's doctrinal position and to subject them to the discipline of the church.Third, the atmosphere of the rooms in which the students met had to focus their attention on the Lord Jesus.Fourth, all of the curriculum materials had to be permeated with the biblical convictions held by the church; Calvary Baptist Christian Academy was not planned to be a school teaching secular subjects with a course in bible tacked on.Fifth, all the students were required to take part in all the studies and activities of the curriculum.Sixth, all subjects were presented from a biblical point of view without apology, there was no need or any opportunity for any assistant to present a subject from a so-called "secular" point of view.Finally, the parents of the students were required to agree with the doctrinal position of the church or agree to have their children taught such doctrinal position.The same conditions hold today for Calvary Baptist Christian Academy as they did in 1980.The standards are the same and the curriculum is even more pervasively biblical.

According to the trial court's findings, beginning in the 19th century, there has been growing concern among Christian "fundamentalist" churches with what they consider to be the calamitous threat of secular humanism.The trial court pointed out in its findings:

The United States Supreme Court[Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 6121 , 82 S.Ct. 1261, 8 L.Ed.2d 601(1962) ] ruling in the year 1962 banning prayer from public classrooms was deemed a "last straw" by many "fundamentalists" and subsequent thereto "fundamentalists" have been vigorous in establishing nonpublic "Christian" schools connected to "fundamentalist" churches such as plaintiff church.Another apparent "last straw" has been the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution as modified from time to time, but not the "fundamentalist's" version of creation as contained in Genesis.

It was to answer this perceived threat that the plaintiffs felt impelled to establish their own school.The trial court's findings continue.

Calvary Baptist Church began operations of its school or academy in the fall of 1981, within the same structure as Calvary Baptist Church and with children coming only from church members and with no separate school organization, so that Pastor Johnson is the head of the school to the same extent that he is head of the Church.He asserts that the school is a necessary and integral part of the church.He asserts that he and likeminded fundamentalists believe that since God created everything including truth, all learning or education involves education in God's truths and that education and religion are therefore one and the same and inseparable.He asserts that a person cannot have religion without education and cannot have education without religion.

Pastor Johnson further asserts that he has selected teachers for the church school after prayer and after learning of God's will in the matter, and, therefore, his selection of a teacher is God's selection of a teacher and that a mere state can have no part in either approving or disapproving or controlling or having any influence or licensing or certifying authority as to school teachers of his church school.Similarly, [Pastor] Johnson and others assert that he chose the ... curriculum for his school after prayer and communion with God, and that his selection of the curriculum is God's will, and that no mere state can approve or disapprove or have any influence of any kind whatsoever or any right or veto or control of God's curriculum.

[Pastor] Johnson and others assert that the church school is a "ministry" or essential religious function of the church and that the state has no more authority to control or regulate the Monday through Friday church school than it has to regulate the Sunday church school.

Plaintiffs also assert that the bible vests in the parents and church the exclusive obligation to educate children, and since the bible grants no educational authority to the state it has none.

[Pastor] Johnson and other plaintiffs similarly assert that any reporting requirements with respect to the church school are tantamount to reporting requirements of essentially religious functions of the church and therefore are constitutionally invalid.

I.Iowa law does not require that all children attend public schools, reflecting a long tradition of friendly coexistence between private and public schools.SeeSage: A History of Iowa, pp. 102-03(1974).This accommodation, dating from the first years of our statehood, was reached at least three quarters of a century before the United States Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot compel all students to be educated in public schools.Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070(1925).

The Pierce opinion, however, carefully and expressly excluded from its sweep any limitation or curtailment of

the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise, and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.

268 U.S. at 534, 45 S.Ct. at 573, 69 L.Ed. at 1077.

The power...