Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971)

Facts:
Pennsylvania and Rhode Island statutes provided state aid to church-related elementary and secondary schools. A group of individual taxpayers and religious liberty organizations filed suit, challenging the constitutionality of the program. They claimed that, since the program primarily aided parochial schools, it violated the Establishment Clause.

Issue:
Whether states can create programs that provide financial support to nonpublic elementary and secondary schools by way or reimbursement for the cost of teachers’ salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials in specified secular subjects (Pennsylvania) -- or pay a salary supplement directly to teachers of secular subjects in religious schools (Rhode Island).

Holding:
In a unanimous decision, the Court held that both programs violate the Establishment Clause because they create excessive entanglement between a religious entity and the state.

Reasoning:
The Court looked to three factors in determining the constitutionality of the contested programs, factors that would become known as the Lemon test. First, whether the legislature passed the statute based on a secular legislative purpose. The Court could find no evidence that the goal of the Pennsylvania or Rhode Island legislatures was to advance religion. Instead the Court relied on the stated purpose, that the bill was designed to improve "the quality of the secular education in all schools covered by the compulsory attendance laws." Second, the Court questioned whether the programs had the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. It bypassed this prong by examining the third prong and finding a violation there, thus obviating the need for analysis of this point. The third factor, and the point at which the Court found the constitutional defect, was over the issue of excessive entanglement. Here, the Court held that the state’s oversight and auditing requirements and the propensity for political divisiveness generated by this kind of aid program would entangle the state and the religious entity in unconstitutional ways.

Majority:
"First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster 'excessive entanglement with religion.'" (Chief Justice Warren Burger)

Read more about this case at firstamendmentcenter.org:

Last updated: Thursday, September 9, 2010 | 04:34:17