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Updated: 1st DCA reverses dismissal of complaint about faith-based rehab; invokes Bush v. Holmes

Posted Dec 15, 2009 by Catherine Whittenburg, Tallahassee bureau

Updated Dec 15, 2009 at 08:32 PM

We update this posting with clarification of the judges’ opinion, which reverses a dismissal and remands the case back to the lower court for trial:

Advocates for the separation of church and state scored a victory today when the 1st District Court of Appeal reversed a circuit court’s dismissal of their claim that state-funded, “faith-based” rehabilitation of ex-prisoners is unconstitutional.

The Council for Secular Humanism, a New York-based organization with membership in Florida, had appealed a Leon County circuit court judge’s dismissal of the group’s complaint that the state’s contracts with Prisoners of Christ and Lamb of God Ministries is unconstitutional. Specifically, the council complained that the contracts violate the “no-aid” provision of the Florida Constitution, which bars the state from spending taxpayer money “directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

The contracts derive from a state law passed in 2001 authorizing the Department of Corrections to hire faith-based service providers to operate substance abuse transitional housing programs for inmates recently released from prison. The organizations clothe, feed, house, and provide faith-based substance abuse rehabilitation and other services.

The 1st DCA’s decision remands the case back to the lower court for trial to determine whether the faith-based rehab program passes constitutional muster.

In their opinion, the panel of three judges found that Circuit Court Judge John Cooper had erred by not applying the appellate court’s prior ruling in another church-and-state case: Bush v. Holmes. That 2006 case went on to the state Supreme Court and ultimately struck down a school voucher program that spent state dollars on private schools, some of them sectarian.

In Bush v. Holmes, the 1st DCA found that the Opportunity Scholarship Program violated the no-aid provision. The Supreme Court ruled against the voucher program on other grounds but did not reverse the 1st DCA’s opinion. In today’s ruling, the 1st DCA ruled that “the trial court was erroneously persuaded by appellees that this court’s decision in Holmes I was limited explicitly to the school context. The Holmes I decision did not limit its analysis to a ‘schools only’ context,” and therefore applies in this case as well.