Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

22 

KENNEDY v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DIST. 

Opinion of the Court 

op., at 24).  That approach called for an examination of a 
law’s purposes, effects, and potential for entanglement with 
religion.  Lemon,  403  U. S.,  at  612–613.    In  time,  the  ap-
proach  also  came  to  involve  estimations  about  whether  a 
“reasonable  observer”  would  consider  the  government’s
challenged  action  an  “endorsement”  of  religion.    See,  e.g., 
County  of  Allegheny  v.  American  Civil  Liberties  Union, 
Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573, 593 (1989); id., 
at 630 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in 
judgment); Shurtleff, 596 U. S., at ___ (opinion of GORSUCH, 
J.) (slip op., at 3). 

What the District and the Ninth Circuit overlooked, how-
ever, is that the “shortcomings” associated with this “ambi-
tiou[s],” abstract, and ahistorical approach to the Establish-
ment Clause became so “apparent” that this Court long ago 
abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot.  Amer-
ican Legion, 588 U. S., at ___–___ (plurality  opinion) (slip 
op.,  at  12–13);  see  also  Town  of  Greece  v.  Galloway,  572 
U. S.  565,  575–577  (2014).    The  Court  has  explained  that
these tests “invited chaos” in lower courts, led to “differing
results” in materially identical cases, and created a “mine-
field”  for  legislators.  Pinette,  515  U. S.,  at  768–769,  n. 3 
(plurality opinion) (emphasis deleted).  This Court has since 
made plain, too, that the Establishment Clause does not in-
clude anything like a “modified heckler’s veto, in which . . . 
religious  activity  can  be  proscribed”  based  on  “ ‘percep-
tions’ ” or “ ‘discomfort.’ ”  Good News Club v. Milford Cen-
tral School, 533 U. S. 98, 119 (2001) (emphasis deleted).  An 
Establishment Clause violation does not automatically fol-
low  whenever  a  public  school  or  other  government  entity 
“fail[s] to censor” private religious speech.  Board of Ed. of 
Westside  Community  Schools  (Dist.  66)  v.  Mergens,  496 
U. S.  226,  250  (1990)  (plurality  opinion).    Nor  does  the 
Clause  “compel  the  government  to  purge  from  the  public 
sphere” anything an objective observer could reasonably in-
fer  endorses  or  “partakes  of  the  religious.”  Van  Orden  v.