Court Opinion

ID: 9853787
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:54:49.890387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:06.287714
License: Public Domain

WOOD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
One of the crowning achievements of the American Experiment has been the *601relative harmony in which people of differing religious beliefs have joined together to create a common civil society. A glance around the rest of the world today offers a sad reminder that many other countries have not been so lucky. Religious strife between Jews and Muslims is a principal component of the longstanding hostility between Israelis and Palestinians; violence between the Sunni and the Shi‘a sects of Islam has taken a bloody toll in Iraq in recent years; Northern Ireland was torn by violence between Protestants and Catholics for decades. The most recent International Religious Freedom Report issued by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the U.S. Department of State (“2007 Religious Freedom Report”) identifies five major categories of abuse of the right to religious freedom, some blatant, some subtle, but all extant in some parts of the world. 2007 Religious Freedom Report, Executive Summary ¶ 4, available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irfi2007/90080.htm (last visited Oct. 1, 2007). The report goes on to single out (1) totalitarian and authoritarian regimes that seek to control religious thought and expression; (2) states that display hostility toward minority or non-approved religions; (3) states that fail to address either societal discrimination or societal abuses against religious groups; (4) states that enact discriminatory legislation or implement policies that favor majority religions and disadvantage minority religions; and (5) states that otherwise respect religious freedom, but that discriminate against certain religions by identifying them as dangerous cults or sects. Id. ¶¶ 5-9. Although we do have our religious differences in the United States, they are far outnumbered by our understanding of commonality. In no small part, this accomplishment is a result of the delicate balance drawn in the First Amendment to the Constitution between the protection of each person’s right freely to exercise his or her religion and the prohibition against the establishment of a state religion.
Another characteristic of which Americans are rightly proud is the tradition of individualism, not in the sense of selfishness, but in the sense of each citizen’s willingness to shoulder whatever burdens need to be assumed and to take responsibility for herself, her family, her community, and the greater world around her. Americans classically do not sit back and wait for someone else to solve a problem. This may help to explain why the tradition of the private attorney general arose in the United States and continues to be such an important part of American public law. It may also help to explain why there has always been a healthy skepticism about “government.” Those entrusted with governmental power might exceed their mandate, which is why, as James Madison explained in Federalist No. 51 (among other places), the Framers of the Constitution chose a system of mutual checks and balances. The Federalist No. 51 (James Madison) (Gideon ed.2001). Speaking about the dangers from an unchecked Legislative Branch in Federalist No. 18, Madison noted that in Pennsylvania “it appear[ed] that the constitution had been flagrantly violated by the legislature in a variety of important instances.” Id. No. 48, at 259 (James Madison). Madison’s concern that “[i]f a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure,” id. No. 51, at 270, is well known. Madison himself thought that this problem would largely be solved by shifting coalitions of interest groups. With the rise of political parties, however, coalitions have not shifted as fluidly inside legislative bodies as the Framers may have thought they would. An alternative check, which was also built into the Consti*602tution, has supplemented the Madisonian idea — the use of the Judicial Branch to rein in unconstitutional actions by either the Legislative Branch or the Executive Branch.
As the Supreme Court has stressed, the Judicial Branch can perform this function only when the person seeking to invoke the aid of the courts has presented a “Case or Controversy” in the sense that Article III of the Constitution uses that phrase. One aspect of this Article III command is that the plaintiff must have “standing to sue.” Put negatively, standing is lacking when “even though the claim may be correct the litigant advancing it is not properly situated to be entitled to its judicial determination.” 13 Charles A. Wright, Arthur R. Miller, Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure § 3531 at 338-39 (2d ed.1984). As this court recently noted in Winkler v. Gates, 481 F.3d 977 (7th Cir.2007), “there are three elements of Article III standing: injury in fact, a causal connection between the injury and the defendant’s conduct, and likely redress-ability through a favorable decision.” Id. at 979, citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). The question in the case before us is whether the plaintiffs are entitled to a judicial determination of the question whether certain rules and practices of Indiana’s legislature — rules that they assert injure them in their capacity as state taxpayers — violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. My colleagues, relying on the plurality opinion by Justice Alito in the case of Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, — U.S.-, 127 S.Ct. 2553, 168 L.Ed.2d 424 (2007), conclude that the answer is no. In my view, they are overlooking crucial points of the rationale expressed in the plurality opinion, as well as the fact that seven Justices out of nine still consider Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968), to be good law. As I explain below, the differences between our case and Freedom From Religion put ours squarely within the confines (narrow though they may be) of the standing doctrine recognized in Flast. I would find that the plaintiffs here have standing to sue and would proceed to the merits of the case.
I
This case, as the majority has explained, concerns the use of chaplains in Indiana’s House of Representatives (“the House”). The House uses a system of rotating chaplains, rather than a single official who is appointed to serve in that capacity for a stated term. (For a discussion of the difference between the two types, see Jeremy G. Mallory, Comment, “An Officer of the House Which Chooses Him, and Nothing More”: How Should Marsh v. Chambers Apply to Rotating Chaplains?, 73 U. Chi.L.Rev. 1421, 1426-30 (2006).) In the interest of avoiding any dispute about the way in which the chaplain of the Indiana House functions, I take most of the discussion that follows from the brief filed on behalf of the Speaker of the House before this court. The Speaker begins by noting that the legislative authority in Indiana is vested in the General Assembly, which is a bicameral body consisting of the Senate and the House. Ind. Const. art. TV, § 1. The House has 100 members; those members elect a Speaker, who has authority over the House. Ind. Const. art. IV, § 10; Ind.Code § 2-2.1-1-7; Rules of the House of Representatives (“the Rules”), Part III.B 19-20 and Part I. The Speaker presides over the House from the Speaker’s stand at the front of the House; under the Rules, no person may enter the Speaker’s stand without the Speaker’s invitation.
*603Part II of the Rules outlines the conduct of business before the House; it includes such matters as the time of convening, deadlines, quorum, and votes necessary for action. Rule 10 spells out the usual order of business. In pertinent part, it reads as follows:
10.1 Calling the House to order
10.2 Prayer
10.3 Pledge of Allegiance
10.4 Roll call
At that point, assuming that a quorum is present, the day’s business gets underway, with reports from committees, introduction of resolutions and bills, and other matters. See Rules 10.4-10.8. The focus in this case is on Rule 10.2, which calls for a prayer. The Speaker explains that the prayer is generally offered by a religious cleric who has been invited to the House for that purpose; if no cleric is present, a Representative will offer a prayer instead. The Speaker authorizes the clerics or Representatives to ascend to the Speaker’s stand to pronounce the prayer. Invocations of this type have been offered in the House for 188 years. (Indiana became the 21st state on December 3, 1818; presumably the Speaker means to say that there has never been a time since statehood when such prayers were not offered. See http://www.statelib.lib.in.us/www/ihb/publications/tlstatehood.html (last visited Sept. 25, 2007).)
The invited clerics are chosen by Representatives, who complete a “Minister of the Day” form indicating when the person is available to serve. Once the form is received, the actual date is scheduled. After a cleric is selected to offer the prayer, he or she will receive a brief form letter. Apart from passing along logistical details, the letter offers the following guidance:
The invocation is to be a short prayer asking for guidance and help in the matters that come before the members. We ask that you strive for an ecumenical prayer as our members, staff and constituents come from different faith backgrounds. Thank you for your consideration.
As the majority notes, the legislature has authorized and appropriated specific revenues to support the prayer. The amounts are tiny, compared to the size of Indiana’s recent annual budget of some $25 billion in expenditures. See http://www.in.gov/sba/budget/2007_budget/as_passed/pdfs (last visited Sept. 25, 2007). The form letter cost at the time $0.54 per mailing; photographs are provided at public expense at a cost of $0.68 each; and the photographs along with a thank-you letter are sent to the cleric afterward at a cost of about $1.60 per mailing, for a total of $2.82 in direct costs. The sessions of the House are broadcast over the Internet at a cost of $112.85 an hour, or $1.88 a minute; this too is paid for by tax revenues. Assuming that a typical invocation is about 3 minutes in length, another $5.64 per legislative day might be attributed to this practice, for a total expenditure of $8.46 per prayer.
During the 2005 legislative session transcripts were prepared for 45 out of the 53 prayers that were offered. The person giving the prayer, and his or her religious affiliation, was identified for all 53 days. On 41 of those days, the prayer was offered by a cleric or other person identified with a Christian denomination; one prayer was offered by a rabbi, one by an imam, one by a lay person, and nine by legislators. In 29 out of the 45 invocations for which transcripts are available, the person explicitly offered the prayer in the name of Jesus, Christ, the Savior, or the Son (sometimes using more than one of those words). In a small number, the officiant notes that he or she is praying personally in the name of Jesus or Christ, but in the majority, the officiant states or implies *604that the prayer is offered in Jesus’s name by everyone assembled. The record is filled with examples, of which I offer only a few. On February 28, 2005, Rev. Radersdorf opened his prayer by saying, among other things, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” On April 5, 2005, Rev. Brown first expressed thanks to the Father “for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” and then, at the Speaker’s invitation, returned to the Speaker’s stand after the Pledge and sang “Just a Little Talk with Jesus,” while some legislators stood, clapped, and sang along, and others walked out of the House in protest. On April 29, 2005, Rev. Descesario said “As a minister of the gospel, I exercise my right to declare this room a hallowed place. I invite into this room, into the proceedings of the day, into the decisions that will [sic] made today, to each person, the mighty Holy Spirit of God. Holy Spirit, give these here the mind of Christ.... I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ.”
These were the practices to which the plaintiffs, all Indiana taxpayers, objected. They filed the present suit, claiming that the Indiana legislature was appropriating and spending monies to support religion and sectarian prayer, and that this practice violated the Establishment Clause. The district court found that they had standing to sue, under Flast v. Cohen, and that the particular prayers the Speaker was permitting crossed the line between permissible invocation and prohibited religious practice first established in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 103 S.Ct. 3330, 77 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1983). It issued an injunction, and the defendants appealed under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). My colleagues have concluded that this lawsuit must be cut off at the threshold issue of standing. While I do not agree with them on this point, before turning to that question I wish to highlight the implications (or lack thereof) of their decision. Nothing in the majority opinion should be understood as a ruling one way or the other on the merits of the House’s procedures. Should someone come along who meets the majority’s concept of standing, the question whether the House may sponsor prayers at State expense urging everyone in the chamber to adhere to Christianity, or edicts declaring the room a “hallowed place,” or musical exhortations, revival-style, to “talk with Jesus,” is an open one.
II
As I noted earlier, the Supreme Court has recognized three elements of Article III standing: injury-in-fact, a causal connection between the injury and the defendant’s conduct, and likely redressability through a favorable decision. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130. Whether the restrictions on taxpayer standing derive from one or more of these basic Article III constraints or if they stem from a rule of self-restraint has been unclear, see Winkler, 481 F.3d at 980 (majority opinion); id. at 988 (Sykes, J., dissenting). Because no one Justice spoke for a majority of the Supreme Court in Freedom From Religion, the question may still be debatable. Nonetheless, both because it is fair to assume that Justices Scalia and Thomas would agree with the three for whom Justice Alito wrote, and because Justice Alito relied squarely on Article III in his rejection of taxpayer standing in that case, I assume for the sake of argument that we are dealing with a restriction on standing that is grounded in the Constitution.
Although it is a bit anachronistic to superimpose the Lujan analysis on earlier taxpayer standing cases, it is nonetheless useful for purposes of understanding how those decisions contribute to the modern *605law of standing. When one looks at all of the cases in this line, up to and including Freedom From Religion, it appears that the crucial element that is lacking in unsuccessful taxpayer suits is injury-in-fact. The Supreme Court’s language in Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078 (1923), which turned away a taxpayer’s effort to challenge the Maternity Act of 1921 as beyond Congress’s Article I powers and an affront to the states’ Tenth Amendment reserved powers, is typical. There the Court wrote that the interest of a single taxpayer
in the moneys of the Treasury — partly realized from taxation and partly from other sources — is shared with millions of others; is comparatively minute and indeterminable; and the effect upon future taxation, of any payment out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no basis is afforded for an appeal to the preventive powers of a court of equity.
Id. at 487, 43 S.Ct. 597. Such an attenuated injury led inexorably to the unavailability of any useful remedy in Frothingham itself.
In Flast, the Court took a closer look at why taxpayer standing had been rejected in Frothingham. It concluded that the taxpayer in the latter case “lacked standing because her constitutional attack was not based on an allegation that Congress, in enacting the Maternity Act of 1921, had breached a specific limitation upon its taxing and spending power.” 392 U.S. at 105, 88 S.Ct. 1942. In essence, the Court continued, she was trying “to assert the States’ interest in their legislative prerogatives and not a federal taxpayer’s interest in being free of taxing and spending in contravention of specific constitutional limitations imposed upon Congress’ taxing and spending power.” Id. The Establishment Clause, it then held, is such a specific limitation on the taxing and spending power, and taxpayers have “a clear stake” in assuring that Congress does not breach those limits. Id. The injury-in-fact that the taxpayer suffers is not the fact that he or she must pay taxes; it is the fact that those taxes are being “extracted and spent in violation of specific constitutional protections against such abuses of legislative power.” So characterized, the injury is both caused by the constitutional violation and it is eminently redressable: all the court needs to do is to enjoin the unconstitutional expenditure, and then leave it to the legislature to decide whether to use the money in other, constitutional, ways or to reduce taxes.
Although some might object to the vagueness of this injury — Justice Scalia, for one, made exactly that argument in Freedom From Religion, see 127 S.Ct. at 2573, 2575-77 — the Court has recognized injuries no more specific than this in other contexts. Thus, for example, in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972), the Court held that users of Sequoia National Park would have had standing to challenge the construction of an elaborate ski resort, based only on the aesthetic injury they would suffer from the adverse effects on the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wildlife of the park. 405 U.S. at 734-35, 92 S.Ct. 1361. Similarly, in Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. 728, 104 S.Ct. 1387, 79 L.Ed.2d 646 (1984), the Court held that regardless of whether a plaintiff might recover tangible monetary relief from a suit challenging unconstitutional discrimination, “discrimination by itself, by perpetuating archaic and stereo-typic notions or by stigmatizing members of the disfavored groups as innately inferi- or and therefore less worthy participants in the political community ... can cause serious noneconomic injuries to those persons who are personally denied equal treatment solely because of their member*606ship in a disfavored group.” Id. at 739-40, 104 S.Ct. 1387 (internal quotations and citations omitted). Further, in Lujan itself, the injury complained of was an increased “rate of extinction of endangered and threatened species.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 563, 112 S.Ct. 2130. The shortcoming in that case was that the plaintiffs did not show how it affected them directly, even, as the concurrence by Justice Kennedy pointed out, through something as minimal as the detriment of buying plane tickets to see the disappearing animals. Id. at 579, 112 S.Ct. 2130 (Kennedy, J., concurring); see also Japan Whaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Society, 478 U.S. 221, 231 n. 4, 106 S.Ct. 2860, 92 L.Ed.2d 166 (1986) (“Respondents ... undoubtedly have alleged a sufficient ‘injury in fact’ in that the whale watching and studying of their members will be adversely affected by continued whale harvesting.”).
The Establishment Clause uniquely involves this sort of psychic, aesthetic, or intangible injury. The injury involved is never physical and only rarely (with the prominent exception of taxpayer cases, it so happens) even monetary. Instead, in cases where the Court has not balked at accepting standing, the plaintiffs claim more intangible injuries such as: having a predominantly religious purpose in arranging art in a particular way, see McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 881, 125 S.Ct. 2722, 162 L.Ed.2d 729 (2005); passing a monument along one’s path to work, see Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 694, 125 5.Ct. 2854, 162 L.Ed.2d 607 (2005) (Thomas, J., concurring) (reaching the merits of the Establishment Clause injury; not questioning standing); or sending a message of endorsement or disapproval of religion, see Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 687-88, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring). Were they attached to another clause in the Constitution, these harms conceivably might be too amorphous for the courts to find standing; in the Establishment Clause context, however, standing was clear. See, e.g., DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 126 S.Ct. 1854, 1859, 164 L.Ed.2d 589 (2006) (Commerce Clause); Valley Forge v. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Inc., et al., 454 U.S. 464, 466, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (art. IV, § 3, cl.2); Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078 (1923) (amends. V and X). Indeed, viewed against the backdrop of other injuries in Establishment Clause cases, the plaintiffs here have shown more concrete damage than most: they have enumerated, with some degree of accuracy, the value of the “three pence” they pay to support the practices of which they complain. See DaimlerChrysler, 126 S.Ct. at 1864, quoting from Flast, 392 U.S. at 102, 88 S.Ct. 1942, which in turn was quoting 2 Writings of James Madison 186 (G. Hunt ed.1901). This harm is more concrete than injuries arising from a Ten Commandments display, a holiday creche, or a graduation prayer, all of which are staples of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. By the standards set in other Establishment Clause cases, anybody who has heard one of these prayers (in person or on the web) should be able to claim standing at least to have her claim heard, whether or not it eventually succeeds. See American Civil Liberties Union v. St. Charles, 794 F.2d 265, 274-75 (7th Cir.1986) (arguing that Establishment Clause standing would exist when a citizen saw a $20 creche or had to alter her path on the sidewalk, but not when she read about the creche in the newspaper). Potential injury to the plaintiffs before us — in their role as constituents, which they necessarily are if they are taxpayers — is even expressly considered and warned against in the letter *607sent to Ministers of the Day, asking that they “strive to be ecumenical”; the caution is presumably there to avoid inadvertently excluding or offending a constituent from a “different faith background.” Categorizing this foreseen, concrete harm as an “amorphous burden” that does not give rise to a cognizable case or controversy, see ante at 30 n. 7, gives insufficient weight to the nature of the harm inherent in all Establishment Clause cases.
In evaluating the case before us, it is not necessary to review all of the cases dealing with taxpayer standing to challenge either Establishment Clause violations or other constitutional violations. It is enough to take a closer look at Freedom From Religion and to note carefully what the plurality did and did not hold there. Before doing so, I note one point of agreement between the majority and me: the principles announced in Freedom From Religion with respect to federal taxpayers apply with equal force to the state taxpayers before us in the present case. The Supreme Court so held in DaimlerChrysler, 126 S.Ct. at 1863, which was a case in which state taxpayers claimed that certain tax benefits afforded by Ohio law violated the Commerce Clause. The Court concluded that it could not reach the substantive Commerce Clause issue, because the state taxpayers lacked standing to sue in federal court. In so holding, however, the Court distinguished between the Establishment Clause challenge that Flast permitted and the Commerce Clause challenge the plaintiffs were trying to press: “Whatever rights plaintiffs have under the Commerce Clause, they are fundamentally unlike the right not to ‘contribute three pence ... for the support of any one [religious] establishment.’ ” Id. at 1864, quoting from Flast, 392 U.S. at 102, 88 S.Ct. 1942, in turn quoting 2 Writings of James Madison 186.
I have been discussing Justice Alito’s plurality opinion reversing the court of appeals, as does the majority, because it was he who expressed the middle ground on the Court. Unlike Justices Scalia and Thomas, who thought that the time had come to overrule Flast, Justice Alito, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy, was not prepared to go so far. The plurality found such a move unnecessary, because in their view the taxpayers before them did not satisfy Flast’s narrow exception to the normal Frothingham rule against taxpayer standing. Justice Souter, writing for himself and the other three dissenters, noted the Court in Daimler-Chrysler had recently reaffirmed that the “ ‘ “injury” alleged in Establishment Clause challenges to federal spending’ is ‘the very “extraction] and spending]” of “tax money” in aid of religion.’ ” 127 S.Ct. at 2584-85, quoting DaimlerChrysler, 126 S.Ct. at 1865. The reason why the Alito plurality thought that the Flast rule did not apply to the plaintiffs in Freedom From Religion was simple: the plaintiffs were not challenging legislative actions; instead, they were attacking Executive Branch expenditures in support of religion (in particular, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives within the Executive Office of the President, and related Executive Centers in other federal agencies and departments). While the dissenters took the plurality to task for that distinction, arguing that the Judicial Branch has no reason to distinguish between actions of the Executive Branch and those of the Legislative Branch, theirs was not the prevailing voice.
The plurality opinion contains numerous references to the importance of the fact that “[t]he expenditures at issue in Flast were made pursuant to an express congressional mandate and a specific congressional appropriation.” 127 S.Ct. at 2565. *608In the case before the Court, in contrast, “[respondents [did] not challenge any specific congressional action or appropriation; nor [did] they ask the Court to invalidate any congressional enactment or legislatively created program as unconstitutional.” Id. at 2566. Allowing taxpayers to challenge general Executive programs on an “as applied” basis would, the plurality feared, stretch the nexus between the status as taxpayer and the program beyond the breaking point. Justice Alito continued, “[i]t cannot be that every legal challenge to a discretionary Executive Branch action implicates the constitutionality of the underlying congressional appropriation.” Id. at 2567-68. He concluded this part of the opinion as follows:
Because the expenditures that respondents challenge were not expressly authorized or mandated by any specific congressional enactment, respondents’ lawsuit is not directed at an exercise of congressional power, see Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 479, 102 S.Ct. 752, and thus lacks the requisite “logical nexus” between taxpayer status “and the type of legislative enactment attacked.” Flast, 392 U.S. at 102, 88 S.Ct. 1942.
Id. at 2568. Finally, Justice Alito rejected the “parade of horribles” that respondents feared would occur if discretionary Executive Branch expenditures were outside the reach of taxpayer litigation. “In the unlikely event that any of these [overtly religious] actions did take place, Congress could quickly step in.” Id. at 2571.
Ill
Given the fact that taxpayer standing, after Freedom From Religion, turns on whether the plaintiffs are claiming that a “legislatively created program” is unconstitutional because it violates the Establishment Clause, we must look more specifically at what our plaintiffs are attempting to challenge to see whether this suit may go forward to an adjudication on the merits. What we find is a challenge to a legislative chaplaincy, created by a House Rule enacted by Indiana’s House of Representatives and administered by the Speaker. The Indiana House and Senate both enact their rules pursuant to Ind. Const. art. IV, § 10 (“Each House, when assembled, shall choose its own officers, the President of the Senate excepted; judge the elections, qualifications, and returns of its own members; determine its rules of proceeding, and sit upon its own adjournment. But neither House shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any place other than that in which it may be sitting.”) (emphasis added). There does not appear to be any additional specific enabling act pursuant to which the rules are adopted at the beginning of each session. This seems close to the practice of the U.S. Senate, which maintains standing rules rather than readopting them at the beginning of each session. See Sen. Rule V.2 (“The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress.... ”).
Under Freedom From Religion, it is necessary to situate these rules, and House Rule 10.2 in particular, somewhere in the broader scheme of Indiana’s government. In the final analysis they necessarily must be legislative acts, executive acts, or something sufficiently like one of those two that we can proceed with the standing analysis. (They certainly are not judicial in nature, which is why I disregard that possibility.) This is not the usual question that comes up, in the administrative law context, with respect to legislative rules. Instead, courts have grappled with whether challenges to this type of internal rule present nonjusticiable political questions for the reason that there is an explicit textual commitment to each house to set its own rules. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 5, *609cl. 2; Ind. Const. art. IV, § 10. But, interestingly, there is a qualification to the political question doctrine for cases in which the internal rules “transgress! ] identifiable textual limits,” Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224, 238, 113 S.Ct. 732, 122 L.Ed.2d 1 (1993). Under Nixon, internal rules give way to constitutional text but are otherwise generally unreviewable. Id. at 237-38, 113 S.Ct. 732; cf. Marshall Field & Co. v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294 (1892) (holding that an enrolled bill is conclusive evidence of its validity; refusing to evaluate the process or rules by which it reached that point). So we are back to the same question: if a House rule violates the Establishment Clause, which looks like an identifiable textual limit on federal lawmaking authority, and state authority through incorporation by the Fourteenth Amendment, is it the kind of legislative enactment that would support taxpayer standing?
There is no indication anywhere that a rule like House Rule 10.2 is anything other than legislative. Indeed, the Indiana courts have made it clear that the powers of the two houses of its Legislative Branch are themselves solely legislative in nature; neither the executive nor the judicial branches of government may interfere with them. See, e.g., State ex rel. Wheeler v. Shelby Circuit Court, 266 Ind. 296, 362 N.E.2d 477 (1977), on rehearing 267 Ind. 265, 369 N.E.2d 933 (1977); State ex rel. Batchelet v. Dekalb Circuit Court, 248 Ind. 481, 229 N.E.2d 798 (1967); State ex rel. Acker v. Reeves, 229 Ind. 126, 95 N.E.2d 838 (1951). Both the majority and the United States, as amicus curiae, argue that it is proper to characterize the rules as non-legislative because they address an internal legislative matter, rather than a public act of the legislature. (Indirectly, perhaps, the majority and amicus are returning to the political question argument. The existence of a possible political question, however, does not defeat standing to sue; it presents a different reason why a court might not adjudicate a case.) In any event, this argument misses the key issue animating Freedom From Religion: Justice Alito’s rationale was founded on the fact that the expenditure was not only executive but discretionary — two steps removed from any legislative action. The majority in our case bases its argument on the fact that there is no specific line item reading “Chaplain — Minister of the Day Program” in the budget. But that begs the question. The budget is not the only legislative act before us. There is also House Rule 10.2, which specifically calls for the prayer, and the prayer is concretely supported by the appropriations the General Assembly makes for the House in the budget. Far from being twice-removed from a legislative action, as was the case in Freedom From Religion, the challenge before us is ratified twice by the legislature, once as a rule and the second time in the budget. It is unquestionably a legislative act.
The House Prayer is thus different from the Bible readings at issue in Doremus v. Board of Ed. of Hawthorne, 342 U.S. 429, 72 S.Ct. 394, 96 L.Ed. 475 (1952) — a case that in any event pre-dated Flast and thus may have been qualified by the later decision. Although the readings from the Old Testament with which public school teachers were to begin the school day were required by a New Jersey statute, they were conducted under the broader umbrella of the state’s school program. The Court saw no “pocketbook” angle to the case, 342 U.S. at 434, 72 S.Ct. 394, but only “a religious difference.” Id. It then commented that “[i]f appellants established the requisite special injury necessary to a taxpayer’s case or controversy, it would not matter that their dominant inducement to action was more religious than merce*610nary.” Id. at 434-35, 72 S.Ct. 394. The real problem for the taxpayer-plaintiffs in Doremus, therefore, was a failure of proof of any pocketbook consequence; plaintiffs here, in contrast, have taken pains to spell out the financial implications of the House Prayer. To reiterate, there is a line item for “House Expenses,” and doubtless the accounts into which that appropriation is put are the ones drawn down to pay for the Minister of the Day program. Flast requires a nexus between taxpayer status (paying into the fisc) and the type of legislative action enacted (the budget item for “House Expenses,” from which these expenditures are made, and Rule 10.2, in furtherance of which these expenditures are made).
The majority would require litigants to trace money directly through the state’s accounts, which is surely an excessive requirement for a preliminary matter like standing. This reading of Freedom From Religion would effectively adopt Justice Scalia’s concurring opinion for himself and Justice Thomas advocating the overruling of Flast, in contravention of the rule in Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 97 S.Ct. 990, 51 L.Ed.2d 260 (1977), which held that “[w]hen a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, ‘the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds....”’ Id. at 193, 97 S.Ct. 990 (citation omitted). It would become impossible to bring a taxpayer suit for anything short of an unimaginably stupid or insensitive legislative action — perhaps a law announcing that Indiana is a Christian state — which in any event would be unlikely to inflict specific enough harm on any one person to allow him or her to sue for more particular injuries.
The majority’s approach also disregards the special place that legislative chaplaincies have held in the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause and standing jurisprudence. Marsh v. Chambers was decided in 1983, long after both Doremus and Flast were on the books. In that case, the Court considered a challenge to the practice of the Nebraska legislature of opening each legislative day with a prayer by a chaplain paid by the state. 463 U.S. at 784, 103 S.Ct. 3330. The plaintiff, Ernest Chambers, sued both in his capacity as a member of the Nebraska legislature and in his capacity as a taxpayer of Nebraska. The Supreme Court noted that the court of appeals had considered, among other things, the question of standing, id. at 785, 103 S.Ct. 3330, but it moved directly to the merits — something it could not have done, given the jurisdictional nature of an Article III challenge, had it thought that there was a problem with standing. On the merits, the Court found no problem with the chaplaincy that Nebraska had adopted. It noted in passing that the chaplain had characterized his prayers as “ ‘nonsectarian,’ ‘Judeo Christian,’ and with ‘elements of the American civil religion.’ ” Id. at 793 n. 14, 103 S.Ct. 3330. It also noted that “[ajlthough some of his earlier prayers were often explicitly Christian, [the chaplain] removed all references to Christ after a 1980 complaint from a Jewish legislator.” Id. These, of course, are merits judgments.
I do not rule out the possibility that some or all of the prayers offered before the Indiana House might similarly pass muster under Marsh. Unfortunately, however, we are never to find out. Under the majority’s approach, even if the Speaker decides to start working his way through the Anglican Book of Common Prayer day by day, notwithstanding the presence of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and other legislators, staff, and constituents, nothing can be done to enforce *611the command of the Establishment Clause. As long as a majority of the House is Christian, it is also reasonable to predict that the House itself will never take action to curb such a practice.
Apart from all the other problems I see with this outcome, it is striking how inconsistent it is with the history of the Establishment Clause. A leading casebook on the subject summarized the type of “establishment of religion” that was known to the Framers of the Constitution as including four prominent features: (1) governmental control over church doctrine and personnel; (2) suppression of alternative faiths; (3) political connections between the established church and the lay government; and (4) compelled attendance and financial support for the established church. Michael W. McConnell, John H. Garvey, and Thomas C. Berg, Religion and the Constitution 21-23 (Aspen 2002). To illustrate the sort of state establishments that persisted after the Constitution was written, the book presents the case of Barnes v. First Parish in Falmouth, 6 Mass. 401, 1810 WL 938 (1810), which dealt with the question whether a public school teacher affiliated with a sect of Christianity different from that of the majority in his area could recover taxes paid over to the majority church. In rejecting his case, the court had this to say:
Having secured liberty of conscience, on the subject of religious opinion and worship, for every man, whether Protestant or Catholic, Jew, Mahometan, or Pagan, the constitution then provides for the public teaching of the precepts and maxims of the religion, of Protestant Christians to all the people. And for this purpose it is made the right and the duty of all corporate religious societies, to elect and support a public Protestant teacher of piety, religion, and morality; and the election and support of the teacher depend exclusively on the will of a majority of each society incorporated for those purposes.
6 Mass. 401, 1810 WL 938 at *4. This case arose long before the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, obviously, and thus long before the Establishment Clause operated as a direct restraint on state law. Furthermore, Massachusetts itself dismantled its established religion in 1833. See McConnell et al., Religion and the Constitution at 35. The element of using taxes as support for religious efforts, however, was a clear feature of the Massachusetts establishment while it persisted.
Professor Philip Hamburger provides further insight into the evils that the Establishment Clause was designed to address:
In late eighteenth-century America the dissenters from the established churches sought limitations on civil government and did so in arguments that conformed to recognizable patterns. The states with establishments had once passed laws imposing penalties on dissenters but now more typically enacted only privileges for their established denominations — notably, salaries for the established clergy. Against these establishments of religion most dissenters sought not only a freedom from penalties (whether in terms of the “freedom of worship” or the “free exercise of religion”) but also guarantees against the unequal distribution of government salaries and other benefits on account of differences in religious beliefs. Some dissenters even demanded assurances that there would not be any civil law taking “cognizance” of religion. As a result, the American constitutions that were drafted to accommodate the anti-establishment demands of dissenters guaranteed religious liberty in terns of these limitations on government — specif*612ically, limits on discrimination by civil laws and on the subject matter of civil laws.
Phillip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State 11-12
(Harvard University 2002). Madison agreed with the dissenters who thought that the state should not establish a religion; indeed he may have favored a more absolute separation between “matters of Religion” and “Civil Society.” Id. at 105. When it came to drafting the Bill of Rights, however, he settled on antiestablishment language similar to that which was finally adopted. Id. This suggests that the Establishment Clause was the result of efforts by religious dissenters who felt the need to protect themselves from the dominant established sects that had managed to secure various benefits that could be conferred only by the state, including access to the public fisc.
In my view, the taxpayer-plaintiffs before us have alleged enough to win the right to present their challenge to the House Prayer before a judicial forum. They are challenging a legislative act, and they have alleged concrete pocketbook injuries. Given both the ruling in Marsh and the qualifications on that ruling, the issue they wish to present is a serious one. They argue, in essence, that preferential access to the Speaker’s stand for adherents to the Christian faith is exactly the kind of problem that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause was supposed to remedy. Were this a simple Establishment Clause case in which they complained about hearing the prayers as they walked past the door of the House Chamber on their usual way to work, they may very well have been entitled to proceed. The majority overextends the command of Freedom From Religion in denying them a day in court. I respectfully dissent.