Opinion ID: 787961
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of the Lemon Test in Freethought

Text: 25 Although the Court decided the case under the endorsement test, it also applied the Lemon test, as the Supreme Court could still potentially review the issue under Lemon. Id. at 250. We disagreed with the district court's analysis under Lemon insofar as it gave relatively little weight to the actions and viewpoints of the current Chester County commissioners who declined to remove the plaque, instead focusing primarily on the motivations of the 1920 county officials who accepted the plaque. Freethought, 334 F.3d at 267. Thus, we concluded that the relevant government action was the decision not to remove the plaque, and, in examining the government's motivations, that courts should consider both time periods with the primary emphasis on recent events. It would have made little sense to attempt to analyze the allegedly offensive effect of the plaque on current Chester County residents, while only examining the original purpose for erecting it. See id. Considering the purpose prong of Lemon, the Court found that Chester County had expressed a legitimate secular purpose for refusing to remove the plaque ( i.e., a desire to retain an historical element of an historical building). As the Court noted, the proffered reason for the decision need not be exclusively secular, and the purpose prong only requires the reviewing court to find that the articulated secular purpose is not a sham. Id. at 267 (citing Edwards, 482 U.S. at 585-87, 107 S.Ct. 2573). Thus, the Court accepted Chester County's reason, citing testimony from Chester County commissioners expressing their views of the plaque as having historical and secular, as well as religious, significance. Id. Chester County also supported these views with case law and legal treatises suggesting that the Ten Commandments have an independent secular meaning in our society because they are regarded as a significant basis of American law and the American polity. Id. While the Court did not specifically consider the Lemon question of whether the primary effect of retaining the plaque was to advance or inhibit religion, it held that question to be encompassed in its endorsement test analysis and, therefore, concluded that Chester County's refusal to remove the plaque was constitutional under both the purpose and effect prongs of Lemon. Additionally, the Court noted that Lemon' s entanglement prong was an aspect of the effect inquiry and, as such, was also encompassed by its endorsement test analysis. Id. at 258 (citing Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 233, 117 S.Ct. 1997, 138 L.Ed.2d 391 (1997)).