Word: maryland
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Morgan State College, a Negro school in Maryland, Scranton got 720 votes, Rockefeller 323 and Goldwater, a nonadvocate of the civil rights bill, a meager...
...already done through the courts, however, strikes millions of people as so improper that she has earned the epithet: "the most hated woman in America." Last year the belligerent Baltimorean won a Supreme Court ban on school prayer. Last month she started suit again to kill a new Maryland law permitting compulsory school "meditation." Next month she goes for the brass ring: a suit against the State of Maryland that is clearly aimed at destroying tax exemption for all U.S. church property. Churches are "leeches on society," she says. "If no other American has enough guts to fight them, then...
...lawyers concede that Mrs. Murray's tax-exemption suit is not without merit. She argues that such exemption forces her to pay higher taxes and support churches-in direct conflict with the First Amendment's prohibition against laws "respecting an establishment of religion." All 50 states, including Maryland, repeat this prohibition in some form in their own constitutions. Yet 33 state constitutions also make church property taxfree. All other states accomplish the same end under other statutes...
...quite sure how much potential revenue is involved. One study shows that church groups own 14% of all taxable property in Pennsylvania, 17% in Maryland, 18% in New Jersey. In other areas, churches own relatively little of total tax-exempt property; in Baltimore, for example, where $528 million worth of property is taxexempt, only $80 million worth is owned by churches (schools and hospitals account for much of the rest). Even so, few dispute the fact that church property is widely undervalued...
Determined to launch equity suits in eleven states, Mrs. Murray has begun at home. Maryland forbids church lease-backs, exempts only property used for church purposes. The state's lawyers will argue that limited tax exemptions are not grants that provably infringe on church-state separation. Moreover, they will claim that Mrs. Murray's financial loss is too small to make her case justifiable...