Court overrules
property-taking in Philadelphia
By AP from the Home
News Tribune Online, February 8, 2006
HARRISBURG, Pa. Feb.7 -- A
city agency violated the separation of church and state when it seized a woman's
home to help a religious group build a private school in a blighted Philadelphia
neighborhood, a state appeals court ruled yesterday.
In a 4-3 ruling, the Commonwealth Court said the Philadelphia Redevelopment
Authority should not have taken the property in 2003 so the Hope Partnership for
Education could build a middle school.
The court said the seizure by eminent domain ran afoul of a clause in the U.S.
Constitution that keeps Congress from establishing religion or preventing its
free exercise. The Hope Partnership is a venture of the Society of the
Holy Child Jesus and the Sisters of Mercy, two Roman Catholic groups.
The authority may not take private property, then give it to a religious
group for its private-development purposes, the court ruled.
In June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that New London, Conn., had the
authority to take homes for a private development project. Since that
ruling several states have been reviewing their laws related to eminent domain.
In a dissent to the Pennsylvania ruling yesterday, Judge Dan Pellegrini said
there was no evidence that the Hope Partnership school project was designed to
establish a religion, but rather was meant to serve residents of a poor
neighborhood.
The school is in an area where a Catholic elementary school closed in 1993.
It is among a group of similar initiatives in needy neighborhoods across the
country.
Sister Rose Martin, executive director of the project, said 30 fifth- and
sixth-graders are enrolled at the Hope Partnership Middle School in space rented
from a community center. She said the goal is to build a $5.3 million
educational center that eventually would have 120 pupils, serve grades five
through eight and offer adult education.
Martin said yesterday it was too early to know how the ruling might affect the
project. She emphasized that the institution is not a Catholic school.
It has two nuns involved in day-to-day operations but offers no religious
instruction, she said.
(Emphasis Added)
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