Lemon v. Kurtzman

403 U.S. 602 (1971), argued 3 Mar. 1971, decided 28 June 1971 by vote of 7 to 0; Burger for the Court, Brennan and White concurring in part and dissenting in part, Marshall not participating. In this case, the Court considered the constitutionality of the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act of 1969 and Pennsylvania's Non‐Public Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1968. Both laws allowed the state to support directly the salaries of teachers of secular subjects in parochial and other nonpublic schools.

The issue was whether these laws violate the First Amendment religion clauses, which prohibit laws that “respect” the establishment of religion or limit its free exercise. In this case the Court established what has come to be known as the Lemon Test, which Chief Justice Warren Burger called “cumulative criteria developed by the Court over many years” (p. 642), to consider the constitutionality of statutes under the Establishment Clause. The Lemon Test added a new “excessive entanglement” prong to the existing requirements that such laws be for a secular legislative purpose (Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963) and that their primary effect neither advance nor inhibit religion (Board of Education v. Allen, 1968).

The Court held that both statutes violated the excessive entanglement strand of the new test. The Court was particularly concerned that teachers in a parochial school setting, unlike the mere provision of secular books, may improperly involve faith and morals in the teaching of secular subjects; further, continuing surveillance by states to avoid this situation would nonetheless involve “excessive and enduring entanglement between state and church” (p. 619). Alluding to Thomas Jefferson's famous metaphor of a “wall of separation between church and state,” which the Court had previously employed to define the meaning of the Establishment Clause, Burger observed that “far from being a wall,” it is a “blurred, indistinct, and a variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship” (p. 614).

To ensure the separation of church and state, the state would have to undertake a comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing surveillance of religious schools, including state audits and on‐school visits. The Court also found that these laws foster a broader, yet different type of entanglement—the potential for divisive politics among those who support and those who oppose state aid to religious education. Although the Court has viewed political division along religious lines as one of the principal evils that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, it chose not to make fear of political divisiveness a separate and fourth tier of the test.

Attempts have been made to replace the Lemon Test with the Coercion Test, which would emphasize limiting government from coercing individuals in their free exercise of religion, and denude the Lemon Test of its “excessive entanglement” prong. These have failed as demonstrated in landmark school prayer cases such as Lee v. Weisman (1992), which outlawed school prayer at a middle school graduation, and Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000), which prohibited high school students from voting whether to have “invocations” at football games and choosing the person to deliver them. In Zelman v. Simmons‐Harris (2002), a case in which the Supreme Court permitted school voucher programs, all prongs of the Lemon Test continued to be important to a majority of justices.

See also Lemon Test; Religion.

— Ronald Kahn

• 403 U.S. 602 (1971)
• Vote: 8–0
• For the Court: Burger
• Concurring: Brennan and White
• Not participating: Marshall

According to Pennsylvania's Non-Public Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1968, the state could directly support salaries of teachers of secular (nonreligious) subjects in parochial (church-run) and other private schools. The state could also reimburse the nonpublic schools for the purchase of textbooks and other instructional materials used to teach secular subjects. Alton Lemon, a taxpayer and resident of Pennsylvania, believed these state government payments of expenses for parochial schools, which had the primary mission of promoting particular religious beliefs, were unconstitutional. So Lemon brought suit against David Kurtzman, the state superintendent of schools, to stop state payments to parochial schools.

The Issue

Did the Pennsylvania law, which authorized state payments to Roman Catholic schools and other private schools with a religious mission, violate the 1st Amendment's religious freedom clause, which said, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court struck down the Pennsylvania law at issue in this case because it provided for an “excessive entanglement” of the state with institutions (parochial schools) set up for the purpose of promoting religious doctrine. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, “The Constitution decrees that religion must be a private matter for the individual, the family, and the institutions of private choice, and that while some involvement and entanglements are inevitable, lines must be drawn.”

The Court drew three lines, known ever since as the Lemon Test, to guide decisions in similar cases. For a statute to be constitutional under the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment, it had to meet these three standards of the Lemon Test: it must have a secular or nonreligious purpose; it must neither promote nor interfere with religion; and it cannot cause an excessive entanglement of government with religion.

Although the Court had maintained a barrier between church and state, Chief Justice Burger said it was “far from being a wall.” He was referring to Thomas Jefferson's famous phrase—“a wall of separation between church and state” —which the Court had used previously to interpret the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment. Burger claimed that separation of church and state is “a blurred, indistinct, and a variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship.”

Significance

The Court maintained a separation of church and state, as it had in several other cases since the 1940s, such as Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township (1947), Engel v. Vitale (1962), and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963). Further, the Court attempted to clarify the meaning of the separation of church and state through its three-part Lemon Test. However, the Court, through the opinion of Chief Justice Burger, exhibited uncertainty about when or how this “variable barrier” of separation between church and state might be lowered.

In 1993 the Court upheld student-led prayers at graduation ceremonies when it let stand the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Jones v. Clear Creek Independent School District. But in Lee v. Weisman (1992), the Court struck down a Rhode Island policy that permitted school officials to include prayers in public high school graduation ceremonies. Further, in Zobrest v. Catalina School District (1993), the court ruled that government funds can be used to pay for a sign-language interpreter to assist a deaf student in a Catholic school.

See also Abington School District v. Schempp; Engel v. Vitale; Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township; Lemon Test; Religious issues under the Constitution

Lemon v. Kurtzman
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 3, 1971 Decided June 28, 1971
Full case name	Alton J. Lemon, et al. v. David H. Kurtzman, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Pennsylvania, et al.; John R. Earley, et al. v. John DiCenso, et al.; William P. Robinson, Jr. v. John DiCenso, et al.
Citations	403 U.S. 602 (more) 91 S. Ct. 2105; 29 L. Ed. 2d 745; 1971 U.S. LEXIS 19
Prior history	310 F. Supp. 35 (E.D. Pa. 1969); 316 F. Supp. 112 (D.R.I. 1970)
Subsequent history	On remand to 348 F.Supp. 300 (E.D. Pa. 1972), aff'd, 411 U.S. 192 (1973)
Holding
For a law to be considered constitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the law must have a legitimate secular purpose, must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion, and must not result in an excessive entanglement of government and religion.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan, Jr Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun
Case opinions
Majority	Burger, joined by Black, Douglas, Harlan, Stewart, Marshall, Blackmun
Concurrence	Douglas, joined by Black, Marshall (who filed a separate statement)
Concurrence	Brennan
Concur/dissent	White
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I; R.I. Gen. Laws Ann. 16-51-1 et seq. (Supp. 1970); Pa. Stat. Ann. tit. 24, §§ 5601-5609 (Supp. 1971)

Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971),^[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Pennsylvania's 1968 Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which allowed the state Superintendent of Public Instruction to reimburse nonpublic schools (most of which were Catholic) for teachers' salaries who taught secular material in these nonpublic schools, secular textbooks and secular instructional materials, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The decision also upheld a decision of the First Circuit, which had struck down the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act providing state funds to supplement salaries at nonpublic elementary schools by 15%. As in Pennsylvania, most of these funds were spent on Catholic schools.

Contents 1 Lemon test 2 Later developments 3 See also 4 Further reading 5 References 6 External links

Lemon test

The Court's decision in this case established the "Lemon test", which details the requirements for legislation concerning religion. It consists of three prongs:

1. The government's action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
3. The government's action must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

If any of these 3 prongs are violated, the government's action is deemed unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The act stipulated that "eligible teachers must teach only courses offered in the public schools, using only materials used in the public schools, and must agree not to teach courses in religion." Still, a three-judge panel found 25% of the State's elementary students attended nonpublic schools, about 95% of those attended Roman Catholic schools, and the sole beneficiaries under the act were 250 teachers at Roman Catholic schools.

The court found that the parochial school system was "an integral part of the religious mission of the Catholic Church," and held that the Act fostered "excessive entanglement" between government and religion, thus violating the Establishment Clause.^[1]

Held: Both statutes are unconstitutional under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, as the cumulative impact of the entire relationship arising under the statutes involves excessive entanglement between government and religion.^[1]

Later developments

Lemon's future is somewhat uncertain. Sustained criticism by conservative Justices such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, lack of a clear reaffirmation of the central tenets of Lemon over the years since the 1980s, and inconsistent application in major Establishment Clause cases has led some legal commentators and lower court judges to believe that Lemon's days are numbered, and that the Court has implicitly left the decision of whether to apply the test in a specific case up to lower courts.^{[citation needed]} This has resulted in a patchwork pattern of enforcement in circuit courts across the nation; while some courts apply Lemon in all or most cases, others apply it in few or none.^{[citation needed]} The Supreme Court itself has applied the Lemon test as recently as 2000 in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe.^[2]

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 403
• Sherbert Test
• Endorsement test
• Lee v. Weisman

Further reading

• Alley, Robert S. (1999). The Constitution & Religion: Leading Supreme Court Cases on Church and State. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. pp. 82–96. ISBN 1573927031. 
• Kritzer, Herbert M.; Richards, Mark J. (2003). "Jurisprudential Regimes and Supreme Court Decisionmaking: The Lemon Regime and Establishment Clause Cases". Law & Society Review 37 (4): 827–840. doi:10.1046/j.0023-9216.2003.03704005.x. 

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} 403 U.S. 602 (Text of the opinion from Findlaw.com)
2. ^ 530 U.S. 290 (2000)

External links

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