Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/403/602/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 15:53:34+00:00

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The test for determining whether a law meets the requirements of the Establishment Clause is whether it has a legitimate secular purpose, does not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion, and does not result in an excessive entanglement of government and religion.
Under the Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Pennsylvania gave the Superintendent of Public Schools the authority to allocate state funds for textbooks, educational materials, and teacher salaries in private schools. Most of these private schools happened to be Catholic institutions. However, the law was carefully written to require that the salaries of teachers could be augmented only if they taught the same courses as those offered in public schools, used the same materials, and refrained from teaching courses in religion. In reality, the only beneficiaries of the extra funding were teachers at Catholic schools, which constituted 95 percent of the state's total private schools, which in turn comprised 25 percent of all elementary schools in the state.
In Rhode Island, a similar law known as the Salary Supplement Act designated government money to provide salary supplements of 15 percent for teachers at private schools. Most of these institutions also were Catholic. The First Circuit had ruled against the Rhode Island law under the First Amendment.
Describing the prong of the Lemon test that concerns excessive government entanglement with religion, Burger recommended that courts consider factors such as the nature of the government assistance, the character and purpose of the institution receiving the assistance, and the relationship that resulted between the government and the religious authority. All three of the prongs in the test, which are listed in the Primary Holding above, must be satisfied for a law to survive a challenge under the Establishment Clause. In this situation, Burger pointed out that private and parochial schools were essentially synonymous in the state and that the Catholic Church viewed its educational program as a central part of its religious mission. Viewing the cumulative effect of the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church created by this law, he found that there was excessive entanglement between government and religion. Once he made this finding, the law would be unconstitutional whether or not it passed the other prongs of the test.
The Supreme Court held that the founders clearly intended to prevent the state from any type of sponsorship, financial support, or involvement in religious activities, which verged too closely on establishing a state religion. While the Lemon test has been challenged early in the 21st century, the Court continues to use it as the principal tool of Establishment Clause analysis. A few current Justices, such as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, have been skeptical about its appropriateness.
the Act alleged that the church-affiliated schools are controlled by religious organizations, have the purpose of propagating and promoting a particular religious faith, and conduct their operations to fulfill that purpose. A three-judge court granted the State's motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim for relief, finding no violation of the Establishment or Free Exercise Clause.
fragmentation and divisiveness on religious lines are likely to be intensified. Pp. 403 U. S. 622-624.
secondary schools by way of reimbursement for the cost of teachers' salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials in specified secular subjects. Rhode Island has adopted a statute under which the State pays directly to teachers in nonpublic elementary schools a supplement of 15% of their annual salary. Under each statute, state aid has been given to church-related educational institutions. We hold that both statutes are unconstitutional.
maintain prescribed accounting procedures that identify the "separate" cost of the "secular educational service." These accounts are subject to state audit. The funds for this program were originally derived from a new tax on horse and harness racing, but the Act is now financed by a portion of the state tax on cigarettes.
belief in the separation of church and state; individual plaintiffs appellants are citizens and taxpayers of Pennsylvania. Appellant Lemon, in addition to being a citizen and a taxpayer, is a parent of a child attending public school in Pennsylvania. Lemon also alleges that he purchased a ticket at a race track, and thus had paid the specific tax that supports the expenditures under the Act. Appellees are state officials who have the responsibility for administering the Act. In addition seven church-related schools are defendants appellees.
expenses. There, MR. JUSTICE BLACK, writing for the majority, suggested that the decision carried to "the verge" of forbidden territory under the Religion Clauses. Id. at 330 U. S. 16. Candor compels acknowledgment, moreover, that we can only dimly perceive the lines of demarcation in this extraordinarily sensitive area of constitutional law.
finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion." Walz, supra, at 397 U. S. 674.
Clauses, for we conclude that the cumulative impact of the entire relationship arising under the statutes in each State involves excessive entanglement between government and religion.
Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 343 U. S. 312 (1952); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398, 374 U. S. 422 (1963) (HARLAN, J., dissenting). Fire inspections, building and zoning regulations, and state requirements under compulsory school attendance laws are examples of necessary and permissible contacts. Indeed, under the statutory exemption before us in Walz, the State had a continuing burden to ascertain that the exempt property was, in fact, being used for religious worship. Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship.
to attempt to maintain a one-to-one ratio between nuns and lay teachers in all schools, rather than to permit some to be staffed almost entirely by lay teachers.
thought to offend the Establishment Clause. We note that the dissenters in Allen seemed chiefly concerned with the pragmatic difficulties involved in ensuring the truly secular content of the textbooks provided at state expense.
a total separation between secular teaching and religious doctrine. What would appear to some to be essential to good citizenship might well for others border on or constitute instruction in religion. Further difficulties are inherent in the combination of religious discipline and the possibility of disagreement between teacher and religious authorities over the meaning of the statutory restrictions.
There is another area of entanglement in the Rhode Island program that gives concern. The statute excludes teachers employed by nonpublic schools whose average per-pupil expenditures on secular education equal or exceed the comparable figures for public schools. In the event that the total expenditures of an otherwise eligible school exceed this norm, the program requires the government to examine the school's records in order to determine how much of the total expenditures is attributable to secular education and how much to religious activity. This kind of state inspection and evaluation of the religious content of a religious organization is fraught with the sort of entanglement that the Constitution forbids. It is a relationship pregnant with dangers of excessive government direction of church schools, and hence of churches. The Court noted "the hazards of government supporting churches" in Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 397 U. S. 675, and we cannot ignore here the danger that pervasive modern governmental power will ultimately intrude on religion and thus conflict with the Religion Clauses.
church and state. The Pennsylvania statute, like that of Rhode Island, fosters this kind of relationship. Reimbursement is not only limited to courses offered in the public schools and materials approved by state officials, but the statute excludes "any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect." In addition, schools seeking reimbursement must maintain accounting procedures that require the State to establish the cost of the secular, as distinguished from the religious, instruction.
which are secular creates an intimate and continuing relationship between church and state.
and obscure other issues of great urgency. We have an expanding array of vexing issues, local and national, domestic and international, to debate and divide on. It conflicts with our whole history and tradition to permit questions of the Religion Clauses to assume such importance in our legislatures and in our elections that they could divert attention from the myriad issues and problems that confront every level of government. The highways of church and state relationships are not likely to be one-way streets, and the Constitution's authors sought to protect religious worship from the pervasive power of government. The history of many countries attests to the hazards of religion's intruding into the political arena or of political power intruding into the legitimate and free exercise of religious belief.
in the Pennsylvania case, it appears that such pressures for expanding aid have already required the state legislature to include a portion of the state revenues from cigarette taxes in the program.
or entanglement between government and religion serves as a warning signal.
"not to teach a course in religion for so long as or during such time as he or she receives any salary supplements." R.I.Gen.Laws Ann. § 16-51-3 (Supp. 1970). The schools themselves must not be operated for profit, must meet state educational standards, and the annual per-student expenditure for secular education must not equal or exceed "the average annual per student expenditure in the public schools in the state at the same grade level in the second preceding fiscal year." § 16-51-2 (Supp. 1970). While the Rhode Island Act, unlike the Pennsylvania Act, provides for direct payments to the teacher, the three-judge District Court below found it unconstitutional because it "results in excessive government entanglement with religion." Probable jurisdiction was noted, and the cases were set for oral argument with the other school cases. 400 U.S. 901.
many faiths are required to contribute money for the propagation of one faith, the Free Exercise Clause is infringed.
change the situation. Laws were passed -- state and federal -- that dispensed public funds to sustain religious schools and the plea was always in the educational frame of reference: education in all sectors was needed, from languages to calculus to nuclear physics. And it was forcefully argued that a linguist or mathematician or physicist trained in religious schools was just as competent as one trained in secular schools.
church the opportunity to indoctrinate its creed delicately and indirectly, or massively through doctrinal courses.
one of the States finances a private school, it is duty-bound to make certain that the school stays within secular bounds and does not use the public funds to promote sectarian causes.
the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment. . . ."
or with the Inquisition. Much history can be given the gloss of a particular religion. I would think that policing these grants to detect sectarian instruction would be insufferable to religious partisans, and would breed division and dissension between church and state.
things being equal, it would seem fair to give preference to a child whose parents support the parish. Regular use of the budget, rather than the size of the contributions, would appear equitable. It indicates whether parents regularly attend Mass."
tax-supported public schools could not be used "for the dissemination of religious doctrines," nor could a State provide the church "pupils for their religious classes through use of the State's compulsory public school machinery." Id. at 333 U. S. 212.
parochial schools in the present cases violates the First Amendment.
Grants to students in the context of the problems of desegregated public schools have without exception been stricken down as tools of the forbidden discrimination. See Griffin v. School Bd. of Prince Edward County, 377 U. S. 218; Hall v. St. Helena Parish School Bd., 197 F.Supp. 649, aff'd, 368 U. S. 515; Lee v. Macon County Bd., 267 F.Supp. 458, aff'd sub nom. Wallace v. United States, 389 U. S. 215; Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission, 275 F. Supp. 833, aff'd, 389 U. S. 571; Brown v. South Carolina State Bd., 296 F.Supp. 199, aff'd, 393 U. S. 222; Coffey v. State Educ. Finance Commission, 296 F.Supp. 1389; Lee v. Macon County Bd., 31 F.Supp. 743.
Remonstrance ¦ 3. The Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments has been reproduced in appendices to the opinion of Rutledge, J., in Everson, 330 U.S. at 330 U. S. 63, and to that of DOUGLAS, J., in Walz, 397 U.S. at 397 U. S. 719.
The common feature of all three statutes before us is the provision of a direct subsidy from public funds for activities carried on by sectarian educational institutions. We have sustained the reimbursement of parents for bus fares of students under a scheme applicable to both public and nonpublic schools, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1 (1947). We have also sustained the loan of textbooks in secular subjects to students of both public and nonpublic schools, Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 (1968). See also Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U. S. 291 (1899).
courses in religious subjects -- promises that must be and are policed to assure compliance. Again, although the federal subsidy, similar to the Everson and Allen subsidies, is available to both public and nonpublic colleges and universities, the Rhode Island and Pennsylvania subsidies are restricted to nonpublic schools, and, for practical purposes, to Roman Catholic parochial schools. [Footnote 3/1] These and other features I shall mention mean for me that Everson and Allen do not control these cases. Rather, the history of public subsidy of sectarian schools, and the purposes and operation of these particular statutes, must be examined to determine whether the statutes breach the Establishment Clause. Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 397 U. S. 681 (concurring opinion).
The Rhode Island statute requires Roman Catholic teachers to surrender their right to teach religion courses and to promise not to "inject" religious teaching into their secular courses. This has led at least one teacher to stop praying with his classes, [Footnote 3/8] a concrete testimonial to the self-censorship that inevitably accompanies state regulation of delicate First Amendment freedoms. Cf. Smith v. California, 361 U. S. 147 (1959); Speer v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 357 U. S. 526 (1958). Both the Rhode Island and Pennsylvania statutes prescribe extensive standardization of the content of secular courses, and of the teaching materials and textbooks to be used in teaching the courses. And the regulations to implement those requirements necessarily require policing of instruction in the schools. The picture of state inspectors prowling the halls of parochial schools and auditing classroom instruction surely raises more than an imagined specter of governmental "secularization of a creed."
transfer. It assists the exempted enterprise only passively, by relieving a privately funded venture of the burden of paying taxes. In other words, '[i]n the case of direct subsidy, the state forcibly diverts the income of both believers and nonbelievers to churches,' while,"
holding was the view that the State's interest in education would be served sufficiently by reliance on the secular teaching that accompanied religious training in the schools maintained by the Society of Sisters."
secular education is neither incompatible with religious learning, nor is it inconsistent with or inimical to religious precepts.
set forth at the outset of this opinion is whether the statutes involve government in the "essentially religious activities" of religious institutions. My analysis of the operation, purposes, and effects of these statutes leads me inescapably to the conclusion that they do impermissibly involve the States and the Federal Government with the "essentially religious activities" of sectarian educational institutions. More specifically, for the reasons stated, I think each government uses "essentially religious means to serve governmental ends, where secular means would suffice." This Nation long ago committed itself to primary reliance upon publicly supported public education to serve its important goals in secular education. Our religious diversity gave strong impetus to that commitment.
and advancement of a particular religion are a primary function of the institution. I do not believe that construction grants to such a sectarian institution are permissible. The reason is not that religion "permeates" the secular education that is provided. Rather, it is that the secular education is provided within the environment of religion; the institution is dedicated to two goals, secular education and religious instruction. When aid flows directly to the institution, both functions benefit. The plurality would examine only the activities that occur within the federally assisted building, and ignore the religious nature of the school of which it is a part. The "religious enterprise" aided by the construction grants involves the maintenance of an educational environment -- which includes high-quality, purely secular educational courses -- within which religious instruction occurs in a variety of ways.
entanglement are insubstantial. Finally, the plurality suggests that the "nonideological" nature of a building, as contrasted with a teacher, reduces the need for policing. But the Federal Government imposes restrictions on every class taught in the federally assisted building. It is therefore not the "nonideological" building that is policed; rather, it is the courses given there, and the teachers who teach them. Thus, the policing is precisely the same as under the state statutes, and that is what offends the Constitution.
The overwhelming majority of these constitutional provisions either prohibit expenditures of public funds on sectarian schools or prohibit the expenditure of public school funds for any purpose other than support of public schools. For a discussion and categorization of the various constitutional formulations, see Note, Catholic Schools and Public Money, 50 Yale L.J. 917 (1941). Many of the constitutional provisions are collected in B. Confrey, Secularism in American Education: Its History 47-125 (1931).
The plurality opinion in No. 153 would strike down the 20-year "period of Federal interest," 20 U.S.C. § 754(a), upon the ground that "[t]he restrictive obligations of a recipient institution under § 751(a)(2) cannot, compatibly with the Religion Clauses, expire while the building has substantial value." Post at 403 U. S. 683. Thus, the surveillance constituting the "too close a proximity" which for me offends the Establishment Clause continues for the life of the building.
and not only undertook secular education as a public responsibility, but also required compulsory attendance at school by their young. Having recognized the value of educated citizens and assumed the task of educating them, the States now before us assert a right to provide for the secular education of children whether they attend public schools or choose to enter private institutions, even when those institutions are church-related. The Federal Government also asserts that it is entitled, where requested, to contribute to the cost of secular education by furnishing buildings and facilities to all institutions of higher learning, public and private alike. Both the United States and the States urge that, if parents choose to have their children receive instruction in the required secular subjects in a school where religion is also taught and a religious atmosphere may prevail, part or all of the cost of such secular instruction may be paid for by governmental grants to the religious institution conducting the school and seeking the grant. Those who challenge this position would bar official contributions to secular education where the family prefers the parochial to both the public and nonsectarian private school.
No one in these cases questions the constitutional right of parents to satisfy their state-imposed obligation to educate their children by sending them to private schools, sectarian or otherwise, as long as those schools meet minimum standards established for secular instruction. The States are not only permitted, but required by the Constitution, to free students attending private schools from any public school attendance obligation. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925). The States may also furnish transportation for students, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1 (1947), and books for teaching secular subjects to students attending parochial and other private as well as public schools, Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 (1968); we have also upheld arrangements whereby students are released from public school classes so that they may attend religious instruction. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306 (1952). Outside the field of education, we have upheld Sunday closing laws, McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420 (1961), state and federal laws exempting church property and church activity from taxation, Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U. S. 664 (1970), and governmental grants to religious organizations for the purpose of financing improvements in the facilities of hospitals managed and controlled by religious orders. Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U. S. 291 (1899).
unemployment insurance not only permitted, but required, by the Free Exercise Clause); Zorach v. Clauson, supra, at 343 U. S. 313-314 (students excused from regular public school routine to obtain religious instruction; "[w]hen the state encourages religious instruction . . . , it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people, and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs"). See also Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 374 U. S. 308 (1963) (STEWART, J., dissenting); Welsh v. United States, 398 U. S. 333, 398 U. S. 367 (1970) (WHITE, J., dissenting). The Establishment Clause, however, coexists in the First Amendment with the Free Exercise Clause, and the latter is surely relevant in cases such as these. Where a state program seeks to ensure the proper education of its young, in private as well as public schools, free exercise considerations at least counsel against refusing support for students attending parochial schools simply because, in that setting, they are also being instructed in the tenets of the faith they are constitutionally free to practice.
of the school and the secular purpose of the State's education program.
the involved institutions was shown to have complied with the model, and that it would not purport to pass on cases not before it. Here, however, the Court strikes down this Rhode Island statute based primarily on its own model and its own suppositions and unsupported views of what is likely to happen in Rhode Island parochial school classrooms, although, on this record, there is no indication that entanglement difficulties will accompany the salary supplement program.
The District Court also focused on the recurring nature of payments by the State of Rhode Island; salaries must be supplemented and money appropriated every year, and hence the opportunity for controversy and friction over state aid to religious schools will constantly remain before the State. The Court, in DiCenso, adopts this theme, and makes much of the fact that, under the federal scheme, the grant to a religious institution is a one-time matter. But this argument is without real force. It is apparent that federal interest in any grant will be a continuing one, since the conditions attached to the grant must be enforced. More important, the federal grant program is an ongoing one. The same grant will not be repeated, but new ones to the same or different schools will be made year after year. Thus, the same potential for recurring political controversy accompanies the federal program. Rhode Island may have the problem of appropriating money each year to supplement the salaries of teachers, but the United States must each year seek financing for the new grants it desires to make and must supervise the ones already on the record.
With respect to Pennsylvania, the Court, accepting as true the factual allegations of the complaint, as it must for purposes of a motion to dismiss, would reverse the dismissal of the complaint and invalidate the legislation.
and secular instruction." At trial under this complaint, evidence showing such a blend in a course supported by state funds would appear to be admissible and, if credited, would establish financing of religious instruction by the State. Hence, I would reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand the case for trial, thereby holding the Pennsylvania legislation valid on its face but leaving open the question of its validity as applied to the particular facts of this case.
Alton J. Lemon, et al.
David H. Kurtzman, Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al.

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