And the case you are refering to (Lemon v Kurtzman) has beeen clarified in other U.S. Supreme Court rulings since 1971 to allow for some Student aid to those enrolled in parochial schools, commonly in the form of a voucher.
This is from an article in the Cincinatti business Courier:
"The U.S. Supreme Court's new understanding distinguishes "student aid" from "aid to religious schools." Public aid to students at parochial schools is constitutional, Justice O'Connor explained, "where the aid is allocated on the basis of neutral, secular criteria that neither favor nor disfavor religion and is made available to both religious and secular beneficiaries on a nondiscriminatory basis."
These criteria confirm that the Constitution's First Amendment religion clause does not compel the exclusion of religious groups from government benefits programs "generally available to a broad class of participants."
You can find this article at
http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/1998/08/31/editorial2.htmlSo perhaps the argument isn't worthless?
