agostini

[Eric Segall]

 Justice O'Connor justified using rule 60(b) in Agnosti on the grounds that
a key principle of Aguilar and Ball was that "Any public employee who works
on the premises of a religious school is preseumed to inculcate religion in
her work," and she then found that Zobrest undercut that view. This is
hogwash. In Wolman, which remained good law after Aguilar, the Court allowed
public school personnel to provide diagnostic testing on the premises of the
private schools. In Wolman, the Court said, "the nature of the relationship
between the diagnostician and the pupil does not provide the same
opportunity for the transmission of sectarian views as attends the
relationship between teacher and student . . . ." Zobrest is entirely
consistent with that view, as is Felton. Having worked on a Title I case for
DOJ in San Francisco, I personally saw the damage that Felton caused and I
thought and still think, that decision was erroneous but the Court shouldn't
have used Rule 60(b, and mischaracterize prior cases, to overturn it.