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14 

AMERICAN LEGION v. AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSN. 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of ALITO, J. 

certain  holidays,  including  Thanksgiving.”    Van  Orden, 
supra,  at  699  (opinion  of  BREYER,  J.).    The  test  has  been 
harshly criticized by Members of this Court,13 lamented by 
lower court judges,14 and questioned by a diverse roster of 
scholars.15 

—————— 

13 See, e.g., Utah Highway Patrol Assn. v. American Atheists, Inc., 565 
U. S. 994, 995 (2011) (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); 
County  of  Allegheny  v.  American  Civil  Liberties  Union,  Greater  Pitts-
burgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573, 655–656 (1989) (Kennedy, J., concurring 
in  judgment  in  part  and  dissenting  in  part);  Lamb’s  Chapel  v.  Center 
Moriches  Union  Free  School  Dist.,  508  U. S.  384,  398–399  (1993) 
(Scalia,  J.,  concurring  in  judgment);  Wallace  v.  Jaffree,  472  U. S.  38, 
112 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). 

14 See, e.g., Green v. Haskell Cty. Bd. of Comm’rs, 574 F. 3d 1235, n. 1 
(CA10  2009)  (Kelly,  J.,  dissenting  from  denial  of  rehearing  en  banc) 
(discussing  the  “judicial  morass  resulting  from  the  Supreme  Court’s 
opinions”);  Cooper  v.  United  States  Postal  Service,  577  F. 3d  479,  494 
(CA2  2009)  (“Lemon  is  difficult  to  apply  and  not  a  particularly  useful 
test”);  Roark  v.  South  Iron  R–1  School  Dist.,  573  F. 3d  556,  563  (CA8 
2009) (“[T]he Lemon test has had a ‘checkered career’ ”); Skoros v. New 
York,  437  F. 3d  1,  15  (CA2  2006)  (government  officials  “confront  a 
‘jurisprudence of minutiae’ that leaves them to rely on ‘little more than 
intuition  and  a  tape  measure’  to  ensure  the  constitutionality  of  public 
holiday  displays”  (quoting  County  of  Allegheny,  supra,  at  674–675 
(opinion of Kennedy, J.)); Felix v. Bloomfield, 841 F. 3d 848, 864 (CA10 
2016) (court “cannot speculate what precise actions a government must 
take” to comply with the Establishment Clause); Separation of Church 
and State Comm. v. Eugene, 93 F. 3d 617, 627 (CA9 1996) (O’Scannlain, 
J.,  concurring  in  result)  (The  standards  announced  by  this  Court  “are 
not always clear, consistent or coherent”). 

15 See  McConnell,  Religious  Freedom  at  a  Crossroads,  59  U.  Chi.  L. 
Rev.  115,  118–120  (1992)  (describing  doctrinal  “chaos”  Lemon  created, 
allowing  the  Court  to  “reach  almost  any  result  in  almost  any  case”); 
Laycock, Towards a General Theory of the Religion Clauses: The Case 
of  Church  Labor  Relations  and  the  Right  to  Church  Autonomy,  81 
Colum.  L.  Rev.  1373,  1380–1388  (1981)  (criticizing  the  “unstructured 
expansiveness  of  the  entanglement  notion”  and  the  potential  that 
certain  constructions  of  the effects  prong  may  result in  “the  establish-
ment clause threaten[ing] to swallow the free exercise clause”); Smith, 
Symbols,  Perceptions,  and  Doctrinal  Illusions:  Establishment  Neutral- 
ity  and  the  “No  Endorsement”  Test,  86  Mich.  L.  Rev.  266,  269  (1987)