Opinion ID: 3051508
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause

Text: Jurisprudence [1] “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”5 U.S. Const. amend. I. In 1971, the Supreme Court issued Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), which established the three-part test that has served as the guiding principle for assessing Establishment Clause violations ever since. To satisfy the Lemon test for constitutionality of a public sanctioning of religious activity, the government conduct at issue: (1) “must have a secular . . . purpose”; (2) “its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion”; and (3) it “must not foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’ ” Id. at 612-13 (quoting Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U.S. 664, 674 (1970)). As recently as 2005, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the vitality of the Lemon test. See McCreary, 545 U.S. at 859-66; Access Fund v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 499 F.3d 1036, 1042 (9th Cir. 2007) (“The Lemon test remains the benchmark to gauge whether a particular government activity violates the Establishment Clause.”); Cmty. House, Inc. v. City of Boise, 490 F.3d 1041, 1054-56 (9th Cir. 2007). 5 Card also alleges that the monument violates Article I, Section 11 of the Washington State Constitution, which states that “[n]o public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction, or the support of any religious establishment . . . .” However, because we conclude that the City’s display of the monument was not motivated by a religious purpose, infra at 2714-15, its display does not violate Article I, Section 11 of the Washington State Constitution. See Malyon v. Pierce County, 935 P.2d 1272, 1282 (Wash. 1997) (“[T]he appropriation of money, or application of property, to effectuate any objective other than worship, exercise, instruction, or religious establishment is not within the [Article I, Section 11] prohibition.”). 3022 CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT The Lemon test has not escaped unscathed, however. See McCreary, 545 U.S. at 890 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (collecting criticism of Lemon by various members of the Court). One notable case decided after Lemon is Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983).6 In that case, the Eighth Circuit applied the Lemon test to find unconstitutional the Nebraska Legislature’s employment of a chaplain and the opening of each legislative session with a prayer. Id. at 785-86. The Supreme Court reversed, eschewing the Lemon test, instead looking to the “unique history” of prayer at the opening of Congress dating back to the Continental Congress and “accept[ing] the interpretation of the First Amendment draftsmen who saw no real threat to the Establishment Clause arising from a practice of prayer similar to that . . . challenged.” Id. at 791. As Justice Brennan pointed out in dissent, Marsh is a narrow opinion that should be construed as carving out an exception to normal Establishment Clause jurisprudence due to the “unique history” of legislative prayer. Id. at 795-96 (Brennan, J., dissenting).7 The Court has also eschewed the Lemon test in the context of coercive religious activity in public schools, where “there are heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure.” Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 592 (1992). In Lee, which addressed mandatory religious speech at graduation, the Court also did not apply the Lemon test, instead holding that “[t]he government involvement with religious activity in this case is pervasive, to the point of creating a state-sponsored and state-directed religious exercise in a public school.” Id. at 587; see also Sch. 6 In his concurrence in Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992), Justice Blackmun asserted that in thirty-one Establishment Clause cases decided since 1971, the Court had applied Lemon in all cases except Marsh. Id. at 603 n.4. 7 The Court also decided Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228 (1982), without applying the Lemon test. Id. at 252 (stating that the Lemon test applied to “laws affording a uniform benefit to all religions, and not . . . provisions . . . that discriminate among religions”). CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT 3023 Dist. of Abington Twp. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 222-27 (1963) (holding that laws requiring that bible verses be read at the start of the day in public schools violated the Establishment Clause).8 [2] Even when applying Lemon, the Court has on occasion tailored the test to the particular facts before it. In Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 208-09 (1997), the Court upheld a statute authorizing Title I funds to be distributed to children attending parochial schools. Justice O’Connor reworked the Lemon test by “folding the ‘excessive entanglement’ inquiry into, and setting out revised criteria for, the ‘effect’ prong.” Cmty. House, 490 F.3d at 1055. Thus, under the revised Lemon-Agostini inquiry, we look to governmental purpose; and, in order to evaluate the effect of the activity, “(i) whether governmental aid results in government indoctrination; (ii) whether recipients of the aid are defined by reference to religion; and (iii) whether the aid creates excessive government entanglement with religion.” Id. Despite straying from Lemon in narrow situations, the Court has consistently applied the Lemon test to religious dis- 8 The district court in Lee applied the Lemon test to hold that, because the mandatory religious speech had the effect of endorsing religion, it violated the Establishment Clause. Lee, 505 U.S. at 584-85. The First Circuit affirmed. Id. In spite of the petitioners’ urging, the Supreme Court declined to revisit its Lemon jurisprudence, noting that “[w]e can decide the case without reconsidering the general constitutional framework by which public schools’ efforts to accommodate religion are measured.” Id. at 587. The Court went on to hold that the religious activity in Lee was so “pervasive” that it had to violate the Establishment Clause. Id. In so holding, the Court did not repudiate Lemon. Indeed, it recognized Lemon as the “general constitutional framework” that applies in this area. Instead, the Court held that some religious activities, particularly those that are coercive in the educational setting, are so plainly violative of the Establishment Clause that they need not be analyzed under any test at all. It follows that, had the Court applied the Lemon test, it certainly would have agreed with the district court and the First Circuit that the mandatory religious speech failed under the Lemon test as well. 3024 CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT play cases. In Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), the Court applied the Lemon test to find constitutional a city Christmas display in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The display included an assortment of traditional Christmas holiday season figures and decorations. It also included a city-owned “crèche, which has been included in the display for 40 or more years, [and] consists of the traditional figures, including the Infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph, angels, shepherds, kings, and animals, all ranging in height from 5 [inches] to 5 [feet].” Id. at 671. Applying the Lemon test, the Court noted that the city needed to have “a secular purpose for its display,” but that the city’s objectives need not be “exclusively secular.” Id. at 681 n.6. The Court opined: It would be ironic . . . if the inclusion of a single symbol of a particular historic religious event, as part of a celebration acknowledged in the Western World for 20 centuries, and in this country by the people, by the Executive Branch, by the Congress, and the courts for two centuries, would so “taint” the City’s exhibit as to render it violative of the Establishment Clause. Id. at 686. In Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (per curiam), the Court found unconstitutional a Kentucky law that required the posting of privately funded copies of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in Kentucky. Id. at 39-40. The law required that each copy of the Decalogue bear a small notation that “[t]he secular application of the Ten Commandments is clearly seen in its adoption as the fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States.” Id. at 41 (internal quotation marks omitted). Applying the Lemon test, the Court found that the statute had no secular purpose, that “[t]he Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislaCARD v. CITY OF EVERETT 3025 tive recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact.” Id. Although Stone falls within the public school coercive religious exercise cases routinely found to violate the Establishment Clause, it also stands for the narrower proposition that government displays of the Ten Commandments can never satisfy the Lemon Test. The Court reasoned: The pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature. The Ten Commandments are unde- niably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact. The Com- mandments do not confine themselves to arguably secular matters, such as honoring one’s parents, killing or murder, adultery, stealing, false witness, and covetousness. See Exodus 20: 12-17; Deuteronomy 5: 16-21. Rather, the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord’s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath Day. See Exodus 20: 1-11; Deuteronomy 5: 6-15. Id. at 41-42 (footnote omitted). The Stone Court further rejected the notion that this presented a case “where the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like,” emphasizing that [p]osting of religious texts on the wall serves no such educational function. If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Command- ments. However desirable this might be as a matter 3026 CARD v. CITY OF EVERETT of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause. Id. at 42. The clear import of the Stone Court’s rationale is that posting such an inherently religious document can never have a secular purpose, and thus can never satisfy the Lemon test.