Playground or Church? Implications for Public Administration from Trinity Lutheran v. Comer

• Date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12898
• Published date: 01 January 2019

104 Public Administration Review • Januar y | Fe brua ry 201 9

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 1, pp. 104–112. Published 2017.

This article is a U.S. Government work and is

in the public domain in the USA.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12898.

Abstract: The roots of public administration are in the fields of management, political science, and the law. The

law is underrepresented in the literature and is not as well understood by nonlawyer practitioners, yet it increasingly

enables, constrains, and prescribes government action. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a case involving

whether a government grant awarded on secular criteria must be provided to a qualified church. This article

contributes to the field’s understanding of the interplay of law and administration by examining the constitutional

issues in the case and their implications for public administration. By considering how this dispute was framed and

the ways in which the court approached its resolution, public officials can better understand the issues in similar cases;

anticipate potential disputes; and (re)design policies that will serve their communities, remain within constitutional

limits, and reduce the likelihood of litigation.

Evidence for Practice

• Public administration is based in management, political science, and the law, so effective public

administrators need to stay abreast of developments in the law when designing policies and programs.

• A given set of facts can be interpreted through different legal lenses, each with unique implications for public

administration.

• While direct service areas of government such as education, housing, and human resources have become

sensitive to constitutional considerations, other areas of public service are becoming increasingly affected.

• The contours of the constitutional requirement of government neutrality toward religion continue to be

tested and evolve.

Philip J. Candreva

Naval Postgraduate School

Playground or Church? Implications for Public

Administration from Trinity Lutheran v. Comer

Philip J. Candreva is senior lecturer of

budgeting and public policy in the Graduate

School of Business and Public Policy, Naval

Postgraduate School. His teaching and

research interests are in public budgeting,

national defense budgeting, public

policy, and law. He is author of National

Defense Budgeting and Financial

Management, published in 2017.

E-mail: pjcandre@nps.edu

Rosenbloom, O’Leary, and Chanin (2010a)

remind us that legal developments have

significant implications for public

administration. “Government can no longer distribute

benefits with little or no regard for equal protection.

It cannot attach whatever conditions it desires to the

receipt of public benefits” (2010b, 144). Rosenbloom

and Naff, commenting on public administration

education, emphasize that “[t]here is no doubt that

law is relevant to public administrative practice. Law

establishes, empowers, structures, and constrains agencies

and programs” (2010, 217). And Wright suggests

that public administration practitioners look to U.S.

Supreme Court decisions to guide behavior, and he notes

the need for scholars to “identify and interpret important

cases for public administration practitioners and scholars

who have limited formal legal training” (2011, 99).

He suggests that law journals fill that need, but public

administrators are less likely to read law journals than

PAR. This article is one step in that direction.

In June 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its

decision in the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of

Columbia, Inc. v. Comer (137 S. Ct. 2012), a dispute

over whether a state grant, generally available to the

public, must be provided to a church that meets

the program’s secular eligibility criteria. It had been

15 years since the Supreme Court dealt with a case

involving public monies going to a church. The issues

in this case were significant enough that 19 states filed

amici curiae briefs with the court.1

This article begins with a short recitation of the facts

of the case and then explains the legal landscape in

which the case sat. The arguments of the two parties

are described, followed by a discussion of the several

opinions delivered by the justices of the Supreme

Court. The goal of providing this background, and

not simply explaining the outcome, is to provide

public administration scholars and practitioners some

insight into how such controversies arise and are

resolved. The article concludes with implications for

public administration.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources

(DNR) runs a waste management program that

Research Article