Aguilar v. Felton involved a New York City program that used federal funds to pay public school teachers for providing remedial instruction and counseling to low-income children in parochial schools. A group of taxpayers sued the city, arguing that the use of federal funds to pay salaries of public employees working in religious schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The program in which the teachers worked included a monitoring system to ensure that the publicly funded classes did not contain any religious material. The Supreme Court held that, even where government aid to religious institutions does not have the primary effect of advancing religion, the provision of aid may violate the Establishment Clause if there is excessive interaction between state and church in the administration of the aid. The city program required a permanent and pervasive government presence in the religious schools receiving the aid to ensure proper administration. The Court found that this frequent interaction between church and state employees created excessive entanglement in violation of the Establishment Clause. This case was later overruled by the Court in Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203 (1997).
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