The dissenting judges of the TC with the 'Celaá Law': "How can low-income families now choose the segregated education model?"
The minority sector of the Constitutional Court has issued a joint particular vote against the recent sentence approved by the Plenary where the so-called Celáa Law is fully endorsed.
In the vote, to which EL MUNDO has had access, the magistrates Ricardo Enríquez, Enrique Arnaldo, Concepción Espejel and César Tolosa are critical of three aspects of the Education Law approved by the Government of Pedro Sánchez. It is about the exclusion of all public financing of schools.
gios that separate by sex, of the new regulation of special education schools and religious teaching.
In the text, the conservative block of the court of guarantees criticizes that the educational centers of differentiated education are left without public subsidies, which in their opinion diminishes the “educational pluralism”. In the text, the magistrates rhetorically ask the following: «How can low-income families choose from now on the segregated education model that is perfectly constitutional according to our previous doctrine correctly cited by the majority? And how is educational pluralism protected if the right of the majority to deprive educational models that, even constitutional, they consider bad or inconvenient is admitted?».
ten year term
Regarding inclusive education, the regulation provides that within a period of ten years the Government will develop a plan so that ordinary centers have the necessary resources to be able to serve students with disabilities in the best conditions, relegating special schools to a function of mere “reference and support centers” and only for those “requiring highly specialized care”.
The magistrates consider that the sentence makes an interpretation “incompatible with the literal wording of the norm” by endorsing the measure regarding the will of the families when it comes to showing their preference for the most inclusive regime.. The vote states that the Plenary's ruling incurs a “contradiction” that cannot be ignored “since it affects the environment where especially vulnerable people will spend most of the day without the company of their relatives.”
Finally, regarding religion, they assure that the TC has made “a covert change of doctrine” with the
Celaá Law
where “it is intended to curtail a right recognized by the Constitution on which there is consolidated doctrine of this court.”
The dissenting magistrates explain that the doctrine of the court of guarantees “unequivocally emerged, at least until now, the constitutional right of the Churches, denominations and religious communities to define and disseminate the religious creed that is the object of teaching,” they add.
The magistrates recall that the Constitution recognized in 2007 “the right of churches, denominations and religious communities to define the religious creed that is the object of teaching is recognized in the
article 16.1
of the Constitution as the nuclear content of religious freedom in its collective dimension, in connection with the duty of cooperation of the public authorities with the
Catholic Church
and the other confessions, established in the
article 16.3
of the Constitution and the right of parents to have their children receive the religious and moral education that is in accordance with their convictions”.
In this sense, the new Education Law eliminates the legal provision of this constitutional right of churches, denominations and religious communities.