Opinion ID: 2585351
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: First Amendment Establishment Clause.

Text: Plaintiffs contend that sections 25373 and 37361 violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment by conferring a benefit on religious organizations that is not extended to nonreligious entities that own noncommercial property that has been designated a landmark. The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, however, that not every law that confers an `indirect,' `remote,' or `incidental' benefit upon religious institutions is, for that reason alone, constitutionally invalid. [Citations.] What our cases require is careful examination of any law challenged on establishment grounds with a view to ascertaining whether it furthers any of the evils against which that Clause protects. Primary among those evils have been `sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity.' Walz v. Tax Comm'n, supra, at 668[, 90 S.Ct. 1409]; Lemon v. Kurtzman [(1971) 403 U.S. 602,] 612[, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745]. ( Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist (1973) 413 U.S. 756, 771-772, 93 S.Ct. 2955, 37 L.Ed.2d 948.) In Walz, supra, 397 U.S. at page 669, 90 S.Ct. 1409, the court had elaborated on the nature of those evils and the difficulty the court has experienced in developing the jurisprudence of the establishment and free exercise clauses: The course of constitutional neutrality in this area cannot be an absolutely straight line; rigidity could well defeat the basic purposes of those provisions, which is to insure that no religion be sponsored or favored, none commanded, and none inhibited. The general principle deducible from the First Amendment and all that has been said by the Court is this: that we will not tolerate either governmentally established religion or governmental interference with religion. Short of those expressly proscribed governmental acts there is room for play in the joints productive of a benevolent neutrality which will permit religious exercise to exist without sponsorship and without interference. Each value judgment under the Religion Clauses must therefore turn on whether particular acts in question are intended to establish or interfere with religious beliefs and practices or have the effect of doing so. Adherence to the policy of neutrality that derives from an accommodation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses had prevented the kind of involvement that would tip the balance toward government control of churches or governmental restraint on religious practice. ( Walz, supra, 397 U.S. at pp. 669-670, 90 S.Ct. 1409.) Building on Walz and earlier cases, in Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105 ( Lemon ), the court developed an analytical framework under which a statute challenged under the establishment clause should be examined to assess whether the conduct is constitutionally forbidden. Every analysis in this area must begin with consideration of the cumulative criteria developed by the Court over many years. Three such tests may be gleaned from our cases. First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion, Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 243, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1968); finally, the statute must not foster `an excessive government entanglement with religion.' Walz, supra, at 674, 90 S.Ct. 1409. ( Lemon, supra, 403 U.S. at pp. 612-613, 91 S.Ct. 2105.) Collectively, these are the three prongs of the  Lemon test. Although, as the Court of Appeal noted here, the Lemon test, which derives in part from Walz, is ill-suited to evaluating an establishment clause challenge to a law that creates an exemption for religious bodies from a neutral law of general application, the high court has not yet modified the test to accommodate such exemptions. In Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. 327, 107 S.Ct. 2862, 97 L.Ed.2d 273, the Supreme Court applied the Lemon test and, concluding that the law challenged there satisfied that test, found it unnecessary to decide if a different standard should apply when a religious exemption was challenged under the establishment clause. The question there was whether an exemption of a religious organization's secular, nonprofit activities from title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's prohibition of employment discrimination on the basis of religion (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.) violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court examined the impact on religious exercise both of the law from which exemption was authorized and, applying the Lemon test, of the exemption itself. (42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1(a).) Before doing so, the court set out the establishment clause principles under which the validity of the exemption was to be determined: `This Court has long recognized that the government may (and sometimes must) accommodate religious practices and that it may do so without violating the Establishment Clause.' Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm'n of Fla., 480 U.S. 136, 144-145[, 107 S.Ct. 1046, 94 L.Ed.2d 190] (1987) (footnote omitted). It is well established, too, that `[t]he limits of permissible state accommodation to religion are by no means co-extensive with the noninterference mandated by the Free Exercise Clause.' Walz v. Tax Comm'n, [ supra, ] 397 U.S. 664, 673[, 90 S.Ct. 1409, 25 L.Ed.2d 697]. There is ample room under the Establishment Clause for `benevolent neutrality which will permit religious exercise to exist without sponsorship and without interference.' Id., at 669[, 90 S.Ct. 1409]. At some point, accommodation may devolve into `an unlawful fostering of religion.' Hobbie, supra, at 145,[ 107 S.Ct. 1046] but these are not such cases, in our view. ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at pp. 334-335, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) The court then applied the Lemon test to the exemption and, in doing so, considered the impact of the exemption from the nondiscrimination provision of title VII. The first prong of that test, that the law have a secular purpose, was met even though the exemption benefited only religious organizations. The court explained that having a secular purpose does not require that the purpose of the challenged law be unrelated to religion. The secular purpose test is aimed at preserving governmental neutrality in religious matters. Under the Lemon analysis, it is a permissible legislative purpose to alleviate significant governmental interference with the ability of religious organizations to define and carry out their religious missions. ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 335, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) The court next examined the impact of the law to which the exemption applied and concluded that, notwithstanding a prior limited exclusion for religious activities, the title VII ban on discrimination continued to impose a significant burden on religious organizations by requiring them to predict, on pain of serious sanctions if they were wrong, which of their activities a court would deem to be religious. (483 U.S. at pp. 335-336, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) Addressing the second prong of the Lemon testthat the law have a principal or primary effect . . . that neither advances nor inhibits religion ( Lemon, supra, 403 U.S. at p. 612, 91 S.Ct. 2105)the court pointed out that a law that permits a church to advance religion is not unconstitutional. Only if the government promotes religion through its own activities or influence is there a forbidden effect. The record did not suggest that the exemption gave the church any greater ability to propagate its religious message that it had before it was subjected to the nondiscrimination in hiring provisions of title VII. Therefore the government did not, by enacting the exemption, itself advance religion. The benefit religious institutions gained, as against other employers subject to title VII, was not a basis for invalidating the exemption. Where . . . government acts with the proper purpose of lifting a regulation that burdens the exercise of religion, we see no reason to require that the exemption come packaged with benefits to secular entities. ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 338, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) The court subsequently struck down a state religious exemption from a generally applicable sales tax on periodicals in Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock (1989) 489 U.S. 1, 18, 109 S.Ct. 890, 103 L.Ed.2d 1, holding that the tax exemption violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment because there was no actual burden on free exercise rights and no concrete need to accommodate religious activity. There, however, the plurality opinion of Justice Brennan emphasized that the tax exemption had the effect of subsidizing the religious body in the distribution of its religious message. [W]hen government directs a subsidy exclusively to religious organizations that is not required by the Free Exercise Clause and that either burdens nonbeneficiaries markedly or cannot reasonably be seen as removing a significant state-imposed deterrent to the free exercise of religion . . . it `provide[s] unjustifiable awards of assistance to religious organizations' and cannot but `conve[y] a message of endorsement' to slighted members of the community. [Citation.] This is particularly true where . . . the subsidy is targeted at writings that promulgate the teachings of religious faiths. (489 U.S. at p. 15, 109 S.Ct. 890, fn. and italics omitted.) Justice Blackmun, in whose opinion Justice O'Connor joined, also emphasized that the exemption constituted preferential support for the communication of religious messages. ( Id. at p. 28, 109 S.Ct. 890 (conc. opn. of Blackmun, J.).) Moreover, freedom of the press considerations not present here led Justices Blackmun, O'Connor, and White to concur in the judgment. Thus, in Texas Monthly there was no clear majority holding that the tax exemption, without more, violated the establishment clause. We agree with the Court of Appeal that the Lemon test is ill-suited to assessing accommodating religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws. Nonetheless, in the absence of further guidance from the Supreme Court as to the means by which the validity of such exemptions should be assessed, we will apply it here, assuming that we may uphold the exemption if the Legislature has a reasonable basis for concluding that landmark designation of noncommercial property owned by a religious entity may impose a significant burden on the ability of the owner to disseminate its message. (See Rowe v. Superior Court, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1731-1732, 19 Cal. Rptr.2d 625 [Under well-established principles of establishment clause analysis, the government can legitimately relieve religious institutions of [a burden that] . . . can rationally be seen as posing a significant deterrent to the free exercise of religion. (Fn.omitted.)].) And, of course, to protect against the evils the Lemon test seeks to identify and avoid, the court must ask whether providing an exemption from a historic landmark preservation law for noncommercial property owned by religious entities contributes to government sponsorship, financial support, or active involvement of the government in religious activity. In our establishment clause analysis we also emphasize that this facial attack on the exemption created by sections 25373 and 37361 does not claim that exemption from landmark preservation laws broadly impinges upon an individual's exercise of a fundamental constitutional right or that in its general and ordinary application it does so. (Cf. American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren (1997) 16 Cal.4th 307, 347, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 210, 940 P.2d 797.) Therefore we apply the well-established rule that a statute will not be deemed facially invalid on constitutional grounds unless its provisions present a ``total and fatal conflict with applicable constitutional prohibitions,'' in all of its applications. ( California Teachers Assn. v. State of California (1999) 20 Cal.4th 327, 338, 84 Cal.Rptr.2d 425, 975 P.2d 622; Tobe v. City of Santa Ana (1995) 9 Cal.4th 1069, 1084, 40 Cal.Rptr.2d 402, 892 P.2d 1145; Arcadia Unified School Dist. v. State Dept. of Education (1992) 2 Cal.4th 251, 267, 5 Cal.Rptr.2d 545, 825 P.2d 438.) We are satisfied that the exemption authorized by sections 25373 and 37361 does not give rise to any of the evils the First Amendment and article I, section 4 seek to avoid. The exemption does not constitute sponsorship of, an award of governmental financial support to, or active involvement by the state in ( Walz, supra, 397 U.S. at p. 668, 90 S.Ct. 1409) the religious enterprises of the owners of property made eligible for exemption at the option of the owner. The exemption does no more than permit a property owner to exempt its property from a landmark preservation law if the owner determines in a public forum that application of the law will cause substantial hardship that is likely to deny the owner economic return on the property, or deprive the owner of reasonable or appropriate use of its property in furthering the owner's religious mission.
Addressing the Court of Appeal decision, plaintiffs contend that the court erred in failing to properly apply this prong of the Lemon test under which, they argue, the exemption fails. They argue that the exemption in issue cannot be sustained because local preservation laws do not impose a special burden on religion. They assume that all landmark preservation laws create administrative and economic burdens on all property owners, but argue that economic costs do not constitute a substantial burden under the free exercise clause. Therefore, they contend, the state may not, under the guise of accommodating religious exercise, grant religious groups a direct economic benefit that is not available to secular property owners. In sum, plaintiffs argue, the exemption does not have a proper secular purpose. The state disagrees and argues that a religious exemption is permissible if a potential free exercise violation is present. We agree. Although application of a landmark preservation law to property owned by a religious entity does not violate a religious entity's free exercise rights, insofar as the law may burden that right, an accommodating exemption is a proper, constitutionally permissible, secular purpose. ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 335, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) The exemption in question here seeks only to relieve religious entities of a potential burden on free exercise. As noted earlier, the Court of Appeal assumed that the exemption of noncommercial property owned by religious entities from local landmark preservation laws would not contravene the establishment clauses of the First Amendment or article I, section 4, if the Legislature had a rational basis for believing that such local ordinances did or might be perceived as substantially deterring the owners' free exercise of their religious beliefs. [5] The court reasoned: The state may lawfully act to reduce a burden on the religious freedom of those within its jurisdiction, especially where the burden is one imposed by the state itself. In doing so the state is not restricted to instances where an actual burden on religious freedom exists. Between intrusion prohibited by the free exercise clause and assistance prohibited by the establishment clause, the state must have room to maneuver. In this instance, given uncertainty over whether local historic preservation laws adopted pursuant to sections 25373 and 37361 would impinge upon the free exercise rights of religious entities, the state could rationally conclude action was necessary to avert a free exercise claim. We do not agree with plaintiffs or the dissent that a religious exemption from a generally applicable law is permissible only if the law creates an actual, not simply a potential, burden on free exercise of religion. As the court said in Walz, supra, 397 U.S. at page 673, 90 S.Ct. 1409, and reemphasized in Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at page 334, 107 S.Ct. 2862, [t]he limits of permissible state accommodation to religion are by no means co-extensive with the noninterference mandated by the Free Exercise clause. While in some circumstances an actual burden may be necessary to justify a judicially mandated exemption to the application of a law to a religious entity, legislatively created religious exemptions are permissible if the legislative body has reason to believe that the law may impose a burden on free exercise. Employment Div., Ore. Dept. of Human Res. v. Smith (1990) 494 U.S. 872, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876 supports our conclusion that whether an accommodating exemption is appropriate is a legislative question and that a legislative body may create an accommodating religious exemption to avoid potential burdens on the free exercise rights of religious entities. Smith was an as-applied challenge by Native Americans to the application of a state law prohibiting the use of peyote, a ban that was shown to actually, but permissibly, burden religious practices to which the use of peyote was integral. The court nonetheless declined to require that all laws imposing any burden on religious activity be justified by a compelling state interest, and thereby to create a judicial exemption to many such laws, stating that whether an accommodation to religion was appropriate was best left to the political process. ( Id., at p. 890, 110 S.Ct. 1595.) The high court has thus confirmed that a legislative body has broad authority to determine that accommodation is appropriate in circumstances in which a court need not exempt the religious practice from a neutral, generally applicable law. As observed earlier, sections 25373 and 37361 do not directly exempt any property owner from application of a landmark preservation law. They do no more than permit a religious entity to exempt its noncommercial property if an objection to landmark status is made and the owner determines in a public forum that imposition of landmark status will cause the owner to suffer substantial hardship, which is likely to deprive the association or corporation of economic return on its property, the reasonable use of its property, or the appropriate use of its property in the furtherance of its religious mission. (§§ 25373, subd. (d)(2), 37361, subd. (c)(2).) The dissent faults this aspect of sections 25373 and 37361, even though the Legislature could have simply exempted the property. Making exemption optional, the dissent argues, is a defect that fails to assure that the religious property owner's ability to freely exercise its religion has in fact been burdened. We do not agree that an actual burden must be demonstrable before an exemption is constitutionally permissible. If the Legislature could reasonably anticipate that imposing landmark status on the noncommercial property of religious organizations might significantly burden free exercise, an exemption is constitutionally permissible. Since the Legislature could have created a blanket exemption, an optional exemption that encourages maintenance of landmark status whenever possible is not constitutionally defective. We are satisfied that the Legislature could reasonably believe that the restrictions accompanying designation as a historical landmark under local ordinances in California may burden the ability of a religious entity that owned the property to carry out its religious mission and that an accommodating exemption was appropriate. The Legislature was aware of the restrictions a historic preservation ordinance imposes on the landmark property and had before it the anecdotal evidence noted above of actual burdens on religious entities whose noncommercial property had been designated a landmark. ( Ante, at fn. 5.) Those restrictions, including limitation of the right to alter or demolish a designated landmark and responsibility to maintain the structure without access to governmental disaster or other assistance, may impose significant financial burdens on the owner of the property. Any significant financial burden, or simply the inability to demolish or alter a structure that is no longer suited to the needs of the owner, could affect the ability of many owners to carry out their religious missions. We do not agree with the dissent, therefore, that the exemption is impermissibly broad, because it recognizes that landmark status for their noncommercial property may create an indirect, but nonetheless substantial, burden on religious organizations. The Legislature could reasonably conclude that the potential burden of landmark designation justified an accommodating exemption for noncommercial properties owned by religious entities. As the Supreme Court explained in Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at page 335, 107 S.Ct. 2862, the secular purpose test is met if the government remains neutral in religious matters. It is a permissible neutral purpose to alleviate a significant governmental interference with the ability of a religious organization to carry out its religious mission. As the Court of Appeal concluded: Between intrusion prohibited by the free exercise clause and assistance prohibited by the establishment clause, the state must have room to maneuver. In this instance, given uncertainty over whether local historic preservation laws adopted pursuant to sections 25373 and 37361 would impinge upon the free exercise rights of religious entities, the state could rationally conclude action was necessary to avert a free exercise claim. Inasmuch as the Legislature could reasonably believe that landmark designation may result in denying the owner the economic benefit and appropriate use of the property necessary to fulfill the owner's religious mission, the exemption authorized by sections 25373 and 37361 meets the secular purpose test and thus satisfies the first prong of the Lemon test.
Plaintiffs argue that the Court of Appeal also erred in holding that the exemption does not advance religion, but only facilitates the efforts of religious entities to advance their own purposes. They claim that the exemption from landmark status provides significant economic advantages to religious groups at the expense of neighboring property owners. Unlike the tax exemption considered by the court in Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, supra, 489 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 890, 103 L.Ed.2d 1, however, exempting a property from landmark status does not have the effect of subsidizing the owner at the expense of other owners of landmarked property. The only impact of the exemption is that the owner may continue to use the property as it sees fit (subject to other applicable laws) to further its religious mission unrestricted by the historic preservation law. A law is not unconstitutional simply because it allows churches to advance religions, which is their very purpose. For a law to have forbidden `effects' under Lemon, it must be fair to say that the government itself has advanced religion through its own activities and influence. ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 337, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) Permitting a religious body to use its noncommercial property in the manner it did before a restrictive law was imposed on it does not constitute an impermissible advancement of religion by the state simply because some such property may be used to propagate the owner's religious message. ( Ibid. ) That the owner may enjoy an economic advantage over secular owners of landmark properties is not relevant. Unlike an exemption from taxes, an exemption from landmark status does not create a subsidy for religious activity by forcing other property owners to be vicarious donors or, since it does no more than permit use of the property as it was before landmark designation, convey any message of governmental endorsement of religion. The effort of the dissent to identify a means by which an exemption for landmark status subsidizes religious activity at the expense of the owners of other landmark properties or the community finds no support in the authorities on which it relies. There is no measurable or identifiable cost to others that can be attributed to an exemption from landmark status. The dissent suggests that when an owner exempts property from landmark status the exemption constitutes a subsidy in the form of a valuable privilege and creates a cultural and historic deficit that the community must make up. But no community is required to have a historical landmark ordinance and those that have such ordinances need not designate all eligible properties. The historical and cultural deficit, if such there be, can exist as easily from failure to designate as from the occasional exercise of the option to exempt a property. Indeed, the dissent itself recognizes that the subsidy to which the court referred in Texas Monthly was one that necessarily resulted from a tax exemptionthe need to offset the lost revenue through higher taxes on the nonexempt class. That other nonprofit organizations do not benefit is not relevant in assessing neutrality since landmark status for properties they own does not threaten any free exercise rights of those organizations. Mitchell v. Helms (2000) 530 U.S. 793, 120 S.Ct. 2530, 147 L.Ed.2d 660, on which the dissent also relies for the argument that this exemption is not neutral or evenhanded, is simply not on point. The decision has nothing to do with the validity of an accommodating religious exemption from a neutral historic preservation law. The focus of the court in Mitchell v. Helms was pointedly and exclusively on application of the Lemon test, as adapted in Agostini v. Felton (1997) 521 U.S. 203, 117 S.Ct. 1997, 138 L.Ed.2d 391, to governmental assistance to parochial schools. Nothing in that decision supports the conclusion of the dissent that permitting an exemption of noncommercial property [6] owned by a religious entity from a law that may burden free exercise of religion is not neutral and evenhanded. We therefore agree with the Court of Appeal that permitting a religious organization to continue using its property in the manner it would have done but for landmark designation is not an impermissible endorsement of religion and the use of the property cannot be attributed to the state. ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 337, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) No burden is shifted from the religious entity that owns the property to owners of other landmark properties. The second prong of the Lemon test is satisfied.
Plaintiffs also contend that permitting a religious entity to invoke an exeruption to landmark preservation laws does not simply restore to religious entities the power to affect their own interests, as the Court of Appeal reasoned, but necessarily enmeshes those bodies in a substantial exercise of governmental power. To determine if the state is impermissibly entangled with religious activity under the Lemon test, the court considers the character and purposes of the institutions that are benefited, the nature of the aid that the State provides, and the resulting relationship between the government and the religious authority. ( Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, 403 U.S. at p. 615, 91 S.Ct. 2105; see also Jimmy Swaggart Ministries v. Cal. Bd. of Equalization (1990) 493 U.S. 378, 393, 110 S.Ct. 688, 107 L.Ed.2d 796.) Here, of course, religious institutions benefit from the exemption. However, the state provides no aid other than leaving noncommercial properties owned by religious entities alone if the owner seeks exemption. The exemption process does not create any relationship between those entities and the state. The state itself is not implicated in the exemption process. The owner, after objecting to imposition of landmark status, may exempt itself from a local landmark preservation law. The owner may do so by determining in a public forum that it will suffer substantial hardship in carrying out its religious mission because the restrictions accompanying that status will deprive it of the economic benefit it would otherwise receive from the property when that benefit is necessary to carry out the owner's religious mission, will deprive it of the reasonable use of the property to carry out the owner's religious mission, or will deprive it of a use appropriate to carrying out the owner's religious mission. None of this enmeshes the government in religion. There is no delegation of substantial governmental authority to the religious entities that own exempt properties, and thus no entanglement between them and the state. Unlike the authority granted to churches to preclude the grant of liquor licenses to establishments near a church or school that was found to violate the establishment clause in Larkin v. Grendel's Den (1982) 459 U.S. 116, 103 S.Ct. 505, 74 L.Ed.2d 297, here there is no opportunity for favoritism by the religious entity and no appearance of joint exercise of legislative power by the church and the state. The exercise of legislative power ends with the enactment of the enabling statutes. While the nature of the public forum in which the hardship determination is made is not fixed by sections 25373 and 37361, it is not a governmental forum. The requirement that the determination of substantial hardship be made in a public forum appears to contemplate a public hearing at which the owner's assertion of hardship may be questioned, but there is no requirement of governmental approval or review of a hardship determination. A declaration by the owner of the property that an objection to imposition of landmark status was made, a public hearing held, and a determination of substantial hardship made and filed with the designated local agency, should suffice. The third prong of the Lemon test is also satisfied. The most recent federal circuit court decision addressing the establishment clause implications of an exemption statute supports our conclusion. In Ehlers-Renzi v. Connelly School of the Holy Child, Inc. (4th Cir.2000) 224 F.3d 283, [7] the law challenged on establishment clause grounds exempted parochial schools located on land owned or leased by a religious organization from a special exception requirement imposed on other owners who sought to build nonresidential facilities in a residential zone. The issue arose when a Roman Catholic college preparatory school notified neighboring landowners that it had elected to exempt itself from seeking a special exception for the expansion of its facilities. The court recognized that accommodation of religion is an authorized and sometimes mandatory aspect of Establishment Clause jurisprudence ( id. at p. 287), and that such accommodation satisfies the Lemon test, as adapted to exemptions in Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. 327, 107 S.Ct. 2862, 97 L.Ed.2d 273. Addressing the three prongs of the Lemon test, the court reasoned that the secular purpose test was met in a facial challenge if a plausible secular purpose appeared on the face of the law. It had no difficulty in finding such a purpose. The exemption made it possible to avoid interference with the religious mission of parochial schools that might occur if they were subjected to the otherwise applicable requirements of the zoning ordinance. By allowing the exemption the county simply stepped out of the way of religion and relieved the school of having to justify its religious or religion-related needs. This also spared the county from having to resolve disputes with religious underpinnings. In short, the low threshold of this first Lemon prong is readily cleared by the Zoning Ordinance's plausible purpose of extricating Montgomery County from these involvements in religion. ( Ehlers-Renzi v. Connelly School of the Holy Child, Inc., supra, 224 F.3d at p. 289.) The parallel to the instant case is obvious. No actual interference was deemed necessary to justify the exemption. The court looked only to whether the legislative body had a plausible sectarian purpose for the exemption, and, as suggested in Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos, supra, 483 U.S. 327, 107 S.Ct. 2862, 97 L.Ed.2d 273, concluded that relieving the school of potential interference with its religious activity satisfied that test. The court found the second prong of the Lemon testwhether the exemption had a principal or primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion was also satisfied, concluding that an exemption that simply allowed a religious school to advance its purposes was not constitutionally prohibited. The government itself was not, through its own activities or influence, advancing religion. ( Ehlers-Renzi v. Connelly School of the Holy Child, Inc., supra, 224 F.3d at p. 291.) The third, or excessive entanglement, prong was met since the exemption had the effect of disentangling the government from intrusion into religious matters. ( Id., at p. 292.) Again, the parallels to the instant case are obvious. An exemption from a landmark preservation law simply allows the property owner to use the property as it did before landmark status was imposed. By permitting the religious organization that owns the property to exempt itself, sections 25373 and 37361 avoid any governmental entanglement with religion. We conclude therefore, that sections 25373 and 37361 do not run afoul of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.