Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-1717_4f14.pdf
Page Number: 53

Cite as:  588 U. S. ____ (2019) 

5 

THOMAS,  J., concurring  in judgment 
THOMAS,  J., concurring  in judgment 

religious  expressions  be  nonsectarian  would  force  the 
courts  “to  act  as  supervisors  and  censors  of  religious 
speech.”    Id.,  at  581  (majority opinion).  Any such effort 
would find courts “trolling through . . . religious beliefs” to 
decide  what  speech  is  sufficiently  generic.    Mitchell  v. 
Helms, 530 U. S. 793, 828 (2000) (plurality opinion).  And 
government  bodies  trying  to comply with the inevitably 
arbitrary  decisions  of  the  courts  would  face  similarly 
intractable questions.  See Town of Greece, supra, at 596 
(opinion of ALITO, J.).3 

—————— 

3 Another reason to avoid a constitutional test that turns on the “sec-
tarian”  nature  of  religious  speech  is  that  the  Court  has  suggested 
“formally  dispens[ing]”  with  this  factor  in  related  contexts.    Mitchell, 
530  U. S.,  at  826  (plurality  opinion).    Among  other  reasons,  the  “sec-
tarian” test “has a shameful pedigree” that originated during the 1870s 
when  Congress  considered  the  Blaine  Amendment, “which would have 
amended the Constitution to bar any aid to sectarian institutions.”  Id., 
at 828.  “Consideration of the amendment arose at a time of pervasive 
hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general, and it was 
an open secret that ‘sectarian’ was code for ‘Catholic.’ ”  Ibid.  This anti-
Catholic  hostility  may  well  have  played  a  role  in  the  Court’s  later 
decisions.    Everson  v.  Board  of  Ed.  of  Ewing,  330  U. S.  1  (1947),  for 
example,  was  written by Justice Black, who would later accuse Catho-
lics  who  advocated  for  textbook  loans  to  religious  schools  of  being 
“powerful  sectarian  religious  propagandists  . . .  looking  toward  com-
plete  domination  and  supremacy  of their particular brand of religion.”  
Board  of  Ed.  of  Central  School  Dist.  No.  1  v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236, 251 
(1968) (Black, J., dissenting).  Even by the time of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 
403  U. S.  602  (1971),  some  Justices  were still “influenced by residual 
anti-Catholicism and by a deep suspicion of Catholic schools.”  Laycock, 
The Underlying Unity of Separation and Neutrality, 46 Emory L. J. 43, 
58  (1997).    Indeed,  the  Court’s  opinion  in  Lemon  “relied  on  what  it 
considered to be inherent risks in religious schools despite the absence 
of  a  record  in  Lemon  itself  and  despite  contrary  fact-finding  by  the 
district  court  in  the  companion  case.”    Laycock,  supra,  at 58 (footnote 
omitted);  see  generally  W.  Ball,  Mere  Creatures  of  the  State?,  35–40 
(1994).    And  in  his  concurring  opinion,  Justice  Douglas  (joined  by 
Justice  Black)  repeatedly  quoted  an  anti-Catholic  book,  including  for 
the proposition that, in Catholic parochial schools, “ ‘[t]he whole educa-
tion  of  the  child  is  filled  with  propaganda.’ ”    403  U. S.,  at  635,  n. 20