nonsectarian

For decades in California, those dollars have only been permitted to go to schools that are nonsectarian.

However, Wardlaw wrote in her ruling that the state failed to show that its nonsectarian requirement is “narrowly tailored to serve” the interest of religious neutrality.

Attorneys for the California Department of Education wrote in court papers that the nonsectarian requirement was necessary because without it, local district officials would wield significant power to direct students to their favored religious institutions.

By the 1970s, however, Christian private schools outnumbered the nonsectarian ones, which inspired political activism among Christian evangelists who had shown little political interest previously.

The decision Friday by Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman came in a case filed last year that challenged a state law that allowed correspondence student allotments to be used to “purchase nonsectarian services and materials from a public, private, or religious organization.”