Source: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/882/neutrality-religion
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 18:29:35+00:00

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That three-prong test articulated by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) is used by the high court and other federal courts to determine whether government has violated the First Amendment principle of church-state separation. Even though the word neutrality does not appear in the Lemon test, many scholars and judges have interpreted the test’s commands to mean that government must be neutral in matters of religion — that is, laws and government actions should have a secular purpose, should neither advance nor inhibit religion, and should not foster an excessive entanglement with religion. Over the years, various justices have tinkered with and criticized the Lemon test, but the Court has never overruled it.
In several recent decisions, beginning with Mueller v. Allen (1983), the high court used neutrality in part to determine whether certain government laws and actions were violating the establishment clause. Most of the cases centered on government aid to religious entities.
In Mueller, the Rehnquist Court considered a Minnesota law that allowed parents to claim income tax deductions for the expenditures they incurred — “tuition, textbooks and transportation” — in sending their children to secondary schools, including private religious ones.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist noted: “It is not at all easy . . . to apply this Court’s various decisions construing the [establishment] Clause to governmental programs of financial assistance to sectarian schools and the parents of children attending those schools.” Construing precedent, however, Rehnquist found the Minnesota law a neutral government aid program that did not breach the church-state wall.
By the time the high court had grappled with tax benefits, such as those presented in Mueller, it had a precedent holding that not all aid to religious schools violates the First Amendment principle of church-state separation. Indeed, the decision in Mueller cited the Court’s 1947 ruling in Everson v. Board of Education, which upheld a public school policy of helping parents shoulder the costs of transporting their children to private schools via the public school busing system.
Following Mueller, the Supreme Court cited neutrality in upholding government benefits to religious schools in Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind (1986) and Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (1993).
At issue in the high court’s 2002 ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris was an Ohio private school voucher program. Most of the high court’s previous rulings on government funding of religion were noted in upholding Ohio’s embattled plan. But in Zelman the Court expounded upon neutrality.
Citing Mueller, Rehnquist wrote: “We would be loathe to adopt a rule grounding the constitutionality of a facially neutral law on annual reports reciting the extent to which various classes of private citizens claimed benefits under the law.” In Zelman, Rehnquist also noted that its precedent made “clear that where a government aid program is neutral with respect to religion, and provides assistance directly to a broad class of citizens who, in turn, direct government aid to religious schools wholly as a result of their own genuine and independent private choice, the program is not readily subject to challenge under” the First Amendment principle of church-state separation.
Not all taxpaying Protestant citizens, for example, will be content to underwrite the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church condemning the death penalty. Nor will all of America’s Muslims acquiesce in paying for the endorsement of the religious Zionism taught in many religious Jewish schools, which combines “a nationalistic sentiment” in support of Israel with a “deeply religious” element. Nor will every secular taxpayer be content to support Muslim views on differential treatment of the sexes, or for that matter, to fund the espousal of a wife’s obligation of obedience to her husband, presumably taught in any schools adopting the articles of faith of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Public funding of religion in America has long been a controversial, touchy subject. The nation’s fourth president, James Madison, offered an eloquent argument against a Virginia bill providing public funds for Christian institutions. In his heralded 1785 text “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” Madison rhetorically asked his fellow citizens and Virginia lawmakers whether they could comprehend that the “same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support any one” religion “may force him to conform” to any other religion at other times.
Alley, Robert S. James Madison on Religious Liberty. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1985.
Leaming, Jeremy. “Voucher Revival.” Church and State, February 2003.
Mullally, Claire. "Free-exercise Clause Overview." Freedom Forum Institute, Sept. 16, 2011.
Ferguson, John. "Vouchers." Freedom Forum Institute, July 2007.

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