Court Opinion

ID: 9431559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:34.399305+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:29.008399
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia,
with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy join, dissenting.
As a judicial demolition project, today’s decision is impressive. The machinery employed by the opinions of Justice Brennan and Justice Blackmun is no more substantial than the antinomy that accommodation of religion may be required but not permitted, and the bold but unsupportable assertion (given such realities as the text of the Declaration of Independence, the national Thanksgiving Day proclaimed by every President since Lincoln, the inscriptions on our coins, the words of our Pledge of Allegiance, the invocation with *30which sessions of our Court are opened and, come to think of it, the discriminatory protection of freedom of religion in the Constitution) that government may not “convey a message of endorsement of religion.” With this frail equipment, the Court topples an exemption for religious publications of a sort that expressly appears in the laws of at least 15 of the 45 States that have sales and use taxes1 — States from Maine to Texas, from Idaho to New Jersey.2 In practice, a similar *31exemption may well exist in even more States than that, since until today our case law has suggested that it is not only permissible but perhaps required. See Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573 (1944); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943). I expect, for example, that even in States without express exemptions many churches, and many tax assessors, have thought sales taxes inapplicable to the religious literature typically offered for sale in church foyers.
When one expands the inquiry to sales taxes on items other than publications and to other types of taxes such as property, income, amusement, and motor vehicle taxes — all of which are likewise affected by today’s holding — the Court’s accomplishment is even more impressive. At least 45 States provide exemptions for religious groups without analogous exemptions for other types of nonprofit institutions.3 For *32over half a century the federal Internal Revenue Code has allowed “ministerfs] of the gospel” (a term interpreted broadly enough to include cantors and rabbis) to exclude from gross *33income the rental value of their parsonages. 26 U. S. C. §107; see also §213(b)(ll) of the Revenue Act of 1921, ch. 136, 42 Stat. 239. In short, religious tax exemptions of the type the Court invalidates today permeate the state and federal codes, and have done so for many years.
I dissent because I find no basis in the text of the Constitution, the decisions of this Court, or the traditions of our people for disapproving this longstanding and widespread practice.
I
The opinions of Justice Brennan and Justice Black-mun proceed as though this were a matter of first impression. It is not. Nineteen years ago, in Walz v. Tax Comm’n of New York City, 397 U. S. 664 (1970), we considered and rejected an Establishment Clause challenge that was in all relevant respects identical. Since today’s opinions barely acknowledge the Court’s decision in that case (as opposed to the separate concurrences of Justices Brennan and Harlan), it requires some discussion here. Walz involved *34New York City’s grant of tax exemptions, pursuant to a state statute and a provision of the State Constitution, to “religious organizations for religious properties used solely for religious worship.” Id., at 666-667, and n. 1. In upholding the exemption, we conducted an analysis that contains the substance of the three-pronged “test” adopted the following Term in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971). First, we" concluded that “[t]he legislative purpose of the property tax exemption is neither the advancement nor the inhibition of religion.” 397 U. S., at 672. We reached that conclusion because past cases and the historical record established that property tax exemption “constitutes a reasonable and balanced attempt to guard against” the “latent dangers” of government hostility to religion. Id., at 673. We drew a distinction between an unlawful intent to favor religion and a lawful intent to “‘accommodat[e] the public service to [the people’s] spiritual needs,’” id., at 672 (quoting Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 314 (1952)), and found only the latter to be involved in “sparing the exercise of religion from the burden of property taxation levied on private profit institutions,” 397 U. S., at 673.
We further concluded that the exemption did not have the primary effect of sponsoring religious activity. We noted that, although tax exemptions may have the same economic effect as state subsidies, for Establishment Clause purposes such “indirect economic benefit” is significantly different.
“The grant of a tax exemption is not sponsorship since the government does not transfer part of its revenue to churches but simply abstains from demanding that the church support the state. . . . There is no genuine nexus between tax exemption and establishment of religion.” Id., at 675.
Justice Brennan
also recognized this distinction in his concurring opinion:
*35“Tax. exemptions and general subsidies, however, are qualitatively different. Though both provide economic assistance, they do so in fundamentally different ways. A subsidy involves the direct transfer of public monies to the subsidized enterprise and uses resources exacted from taxpayers as a whole. An exemption, on the other hand, involves no such transfer.” Id., at 690 (footnote omitted).
See also id., at 691 (“Tax exemptions . . . constitute mere passive state involvement with religion and not the affirmative involvement characteristic of outright governmental subsidy”).
Third, we held that the New York exemption did not produce unacceptable government entanglement with religion. In fact, quite to the contrary. Since the exemptions avoided the “tax liens, tax foreclosures, and the direct confrontations and conflicts that follow in the train of those legal processes,” id., at 674, we found that their elimination would increase government’s involvement with religious institutions, id., at 674-676. See also id., at 691 (Brennan, J., concurring) (“[I]t cannot realistically be said that termination of religious tax exemptions would quantitatively lessen the extent of state involvement with religion”).
We recognized in Walz that the exemption of religion from various taxes had existed without challenge in the law of all 50 States and the National Government before, during, and after the framing of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses, and had achieved “undeviating acceptance” throughout the 200-year history of our Nation. “Few concepts,” we said, “are more deeply embedded in the fabric of our national life, beginning with pre-Revolutionary colonial times, than for the government to exercise at the very least this kind of benevolent neutrality toward churches and religious exercise generally so long as none was favored over others and none suffered interference.” Id., at 676-677. See also id., at 681 (Brennan, J., concurring) (noting the “the undeviating ac*36ceptance given religious tax exemptions from our earliest days as a Nation”).
It should be apparent from this discussion that Walz, which we have reaffirmed on numerous occasions in the last two decades, e. g., Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327 (1987), is utterly dispositive of the Establishment Clause claim before us here. The Court invalidates § 151.312 of the Texas Tax Code only by distorting the holding of that case and radically altering the well-settled Establishment Clause jurisprudence which that case represents.
Justice Brennan explains away Walz by asserting that “[t]he breadth of New York’s property tax exemption was essential to our holding that it was ‘not aimed at establishing, sponsoring, or supporting religion.’” Ante, at 12 (quoting Walz, 397 U. S., at 674). This is not a plausible reading of the opinion. At the outset of its discussion concerning the permissibility of the legislative purpose, the Walz Court did discuss the fact that the New York tax exemption applied not just to religions but to certain other “nonprofit” groups, including “hospitals, libraries, playgrounds, scientific, professional, historical, and patriotic groups.” Id., at 673. The finding of valid legislative purpose was not rested upon that, however, but upon the more direct proposition that “exemption constitutes a reasonable and balanced attempt to guard against” the “latent dangers” of governmental hostility towards religion “inherent in the imposition of property taxes.” Ibid. The venerable federal legislation that the Court cited to support its holding was not legislation that exempted religion along with other things, but legislation that exempted religion alone. See, e. g., ch. 17, 6 Stat. 116 (1813) (remitting duties paid on the importation of plates for printing Bibles); ch. 91, 6 Stat. 346 (1826) (remitting duties paid on the importation of church vestments, furniture, and paintings); ch. 259, 6 Stat. 600 (1834) (remitting duties paid on the importation of church bells). Moreover, if the Court had in*37tended to rely upon a “breadth of coverage” rationale, it would have had to identify some characteristic that rationally placed religion within the same policy category as the other institutions. Justice Brennan’s concurring opinion in Walz conducted such an analysis, finding the New York exemption permissible only because religions, like the other types of nonprofit organizations exempted, “contribute to the well-being of the community in a variety of nonreligious ways,” 397 U. S., at 687, and (incomprehensibly) because they “uniquely contribute to the pluralism of American society by their religious activities,” id., at 689. (I say incomprehensibly because to favor religion for its “unique contribution” is to favor religion as religion.) Justice Harlan’s opinion conducted a similar analysis, finding that the New York statute “defined a class of nontaxable entities whose common denominator is their nonprofit pursuit of activities devoted to cultural and moral improvement and the doing of ‘good works’ by performing certain social services in the community that might otherwise have to be assumed by government.” Id., at 696. The Court’s opinion in Walz, however, not only failed to conduct such an analysis, but — seemingly in reply to the concurrences — explicitly and categorically disavowed reliance upon it, concluding its discussion of legislative purpose with a paragraph that begins as follows: “We find it unnecessary to justify the tax exemption on the social welfare services or ‘good works’ that some churches perform for parishioners and others,” id., at 674. This should be compared with today’s rewriting of Walz: “[W]e concluded that the State might reasonably have determined that religious groups generally contribute to the cultural and moral improvement of the community, perform useful social services, and enhance a desirable pluralism of viewpoint and enterprise, just as do the host of other nonprofit organizations that qualified for the exemption.” Ante, at 12, n. 2. This is a marvellously accurate description of what Justices Brennan and Harlan believed, and what the Court specifically re*38jected. The Court did not approve an exemption for charities that happened to benefit religion; it approved an exemption for religion as an exemption for religion.
Today’s opinions go beyond misdescribing Walz, however. In repudiating what Walz in fact approved, they achieve a revolution in bur Establishment Clause jurisprudence, effectively overruling other cases that were based, as Walz was, on the “accommodation of religion” rationale. According to Justice Brennan’s opinion, no law is constitutional whose “benefits [are] confined to religious organizations,” ante, at 11 — except, of course, those laws that are unconstitutional unless they contain benefits confined to religious organizations, see ante, at 17-18. See also Justice Blackmun’s opinion, ante, at 28. Our jurisprudence affords no support for this unlikely proposition. Walz is just one of a long line of cases in which we have 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 (1987); see McConnell, Accommodation of Religion, 1985 S. Ct. Rev. 1, 3. In such cases as Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963), Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972), Thomas v. Review Bd. of Ind. Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707 (1981), and Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Fla., supra, we held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment required religious beliefs to be accommodated by granting religion-specific exemptions from otherwise applicable laws. We have often made clear, however, that “[t]he limits of permissible state accommodation to religion are by no means coextensive with the noninterference mandated by the Free Exercise Clause.” Walz, 397 U. S., at 673. See also Hobbie, supra, at 144-145, and n. 10; Gillette v. United States, 401 U. S. 437, 453 (1971); Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U. S. 599, 605-608 (1961) (plurality opinion); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 82 (1985) (O’Connor, J., concurring).
*39We applied the accommodation principle, to permit special treatment of religion that was not required by the Free Exercise Clause, in Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306 (1952), where we found no constitutional objection to a New York City program permitting public school children to absent themselves one hour a week for “religious observance and education outside the school grounds,” id., at 308, n. 1. We applied the same principle only two Terms ago in Corporation of Presiding Bishop, where, citing Zorach and Walz, we upheld a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 exempting religious groups (and only religious groups) from Title VII’s antidiscrimination provisions. We found that “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.” 483 U. S., at 335. We specifically rejected the District Court’s conclusion identical to that which a majority of the Court endorses today: that invalidity followed from the fact that the exemption “singles out religious entities for a benefit, rather than benefiting a broad grouping of which religious organizations are only a part.” Id., at 333. We stated that the Court “has never indicated that statutes that give special consideration to religious groups are per se invalid.” Id., at 338. As discussed earlier, it was this same principle of permissible accommodation that we applied in Walz.
The novelty of today’s holding is obscured by Justice Brennan’s citation and description of many eases in which “breadth of coverage” ivas relevant to the First Amendment determination. See ante, at 10-11. Breadth of coverage is essential to constitutionality whenever a law’s benefiting of religious activity is sought to be defended not specifically (or not exclusively) as an intentional and reasonable accommodation of religion, but as merely the incidental consequence of seeking to benefit all activity that achieves a particular secular goal. But that is a different rationale — more commonly invoked than accommodation of religion but, as our cases *40show, not preclusive of it. Where accommodation of religion is the justification, by definition religion is being singled out. The same confusion of rationales explains the facility with which Justice Brennan’s opinion can portray the present statute as violating the first prong of the Lemon test, which is usually described as requiring a “secular legislative purpose.” Lemon, 403 U. S., at 612. That is an entirely accurate description of the governing rule when, as in Lemon and most other cases, government aid to religious institutions is sought to be justified on the ground that it is not religion per se that is the object of assistance, but rather the secular functions that the religious institutions, along with other institutions, provide. But as I noted earlier, the substance of the Lemon test (purpose, effect, entanglement) was first roughly set forth in Walz — and in that context, the “accommodation of religion” context, the purpose was said to be valid so long as it was “neither the advancement nor the inhibition of religion; . . . neither sponsorship nor hostility.” 397 U. S., at 672. Of course rather than reformulating the Lemon test in “accommodation” cases (the text of Lemon is not, after all, a statutory enactment), one might instead simply describe the protection of free exercise concerns, and the maintenance of the necessary neutrality, as “secular purpose and effect,” since they are a purpose and effect approved, and indeed to some degree mandated, by the Constitution. However the reconciliation with the Lemon terminology is achieved, our cases make plain that it is permissible for a State to act with the purpose and effect of “limiting governmental interference with the exercise of religion.” Corporation of Presiding Bishop, 483 U. S., at 339.
It is not always easy to determine when accommodation slides over into promotion, and neutrality into favoritism, but the withholding of a tax upon the dissemination of religious materials is not even a close case. The subjects of the exemption before us consist exclusively of “writings promulgating the teaching of the faith” and “writings sacred to a reli*41gious faith.” If there is any close question, it is not whether the exemption is permitted, but whether it is constitutionally compelled in order to avoid “interference with the dissemination of religious ideas.” Gillette, 401 U. S., at 462. In Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943), we held that it was unconstitutional to apply a municipal license tax on door-to-door solicitation to sellers of religious books and pamphlets. One Term later, in Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573 (1944), we held that it was unconstitutional to apply to such persons a municipal license tax on “[ajgents selling books.” Those cases are not as readily distinguishable as Justice Brennan suggests. I doubt whether it would have made any difference (as he contends) if the municipalities had attempted to achieve the same result of burdening the religious activity through a sales tax rather than a license tax; surely such a distinction trivializes the holdings. And the other basis of distinction he proposes —that the persons taxed in those cases were “religious missionaries whose principal work is preaching” — is simply not available with respect to the first part of the statute at issue here (which happens to be the portion upon which petitioner placed its exclusive reliance). Unlike the Texas exemption for sacred books, which, on its face at least, applies to all sales, the exemption for periodicals applies to material that not only “consist[s] wholly of writings promulgating the teaching of [a religious] faith,” but also is “published or distributed by [that] faith.” Surely this is material distributed by missionaries. Unless, again, one wishes to trivialize the earlier cases, whether they are full-time or part-time missionaries can hardly make a difference, nor can the fact that they conduct their proselytizing through the mail or from a church or store instead of door-to-door.
I am willing to acknowledge, however, that Murdock and Follett are narrowly distinguishable. But what follows from that is not the facile conclusion that therefore the State has no “compelling interest in avoiding violations of the Free Ex*42ercise and Establishment Clauses,” ante, at 17, and thus the exemption is invalid. This analysis is yet another expression of Justice Brennan’s repudiation of the accommodation principle — which, as described earlier, consists of recognition 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, 397 U. S., at 673. By saying that what is not required cannot be allowed, Justice Brennan would completely block off the already narrow “channel between the Scylla [of what the Free Exercise Clause demands] and the Charybdis [of what the Establishment Clause forbids] through which any state or federal action must pass in order to survive constitutional scrutiny.” Thomas, 450 U. S., at 721 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). The proper lesson to be drawn from the narrow distinguishing of Murdock and Follett is quite different: If the exemption comes so close to being a constitutionally required accommodation, there is no doubt that it is at least a permissible one.
Although Justice Brennan’s opinion places almost its entire reliance upon the “purpose” prong of Lemon, it alludes briefly to the second prong as well, finding that § 151.312 has the impermissible “effect of sponsoring certain religious tenets or religious belief in general,” ante, at 17. Once again, Walz stands in stark opposition to this assertion, but it may be useful to explain why. Quite obviously, a sales tax exemption aids religion, since it makes it less costly for religions to disseminate their beliefs. Cf. Murdock, supra, at 112-113. But that has never been enough to strike down an enactment under the Establishment Clause. “A law is not unconstitutional simply because it allows churches to advance religion, which is their very purpose.” Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, at 337 (emphasis in original). The Court has consistently rejected “the argument that any program which in some manner aids an institution with a religious affiliation” violates the Establishment Clause. Muel*43ler v. Allen, 463 U. S. 388, 393 (1983) (quoting Hunt v. McNair, 413 U. S. 734, 742 (1973)). To be sure, we have set our face against the subsidizing of religion — and in other contexts we have suggested that tax exemptions and subsidies are equivalent. E. g., Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U. S. 574, 591 (1983); Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 544 (1983). We have not treated them as equivalent, however, in the Establishment Clause context, and with good reason. “In the case of direct subsidy, the state forcibly diverts the income of both believers and nonbelievers to churches. In the case of an exemption, the state merely refrains from diverting to its own uses income independently generated by the churches through voluntary contributions.” Giannella, Religious Liberty, Nonestablishment, and Doctrinal Development, 81 Harv. L. Rev. 513, 553 (1968). In Walz we pointed out that the primary effect of a tax exemption was not to sponsor religious activity but to “restric[t] the fiscal relationship between church and state” and to “complement and reinforce the desired separation insulating each from the other.” 397 U. S., at 676; see also id., at 690-691 (Brennan, J., concurring).
Finally, and least persuasively of all, Justice Brennan suggests that § 151.312 violates the “excessive government entanglement” aspect of Lemon, 403 U. S., at 613. Ante, at 20-21. It is plain that the exemption does not foster the sort of “comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance” necessary to run afoul of that test. 403 U. S., at 619. A State does not excessively involve itself in religious affairs merely by examining material to determine whether it is religious or secular in nature. Mueller v. Allen, supra, at 403; Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S. 349, 359-362 (1975) (upholding loans of nonreligious textbooks to religious schools); Board of Education of Central School Dist. No. 1 v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 (1968) (same). In Mueller, for instance, we held that state officials’ examination of textbooks to determine whether they were “books and materials used in the *44teaching of religious tenets, doctrines or worship” did not constitute excessive entanglement. 463 U. S., at 403. I see no material distinction between that inquiry and the one Texas officials must make in this case. Moreover, here as in Walz, see 397 U. S., at 674, it is all but certain that elimination of the exemption will have the effect of increasing government’s involvement with religion. The Court’s invalidation of § 151.312 ensures that Texas churches selling publications that promulgate their religion will now be subject to numerous statutory and regulatory impositions, including audits, Tex. Tax Code Ann. § 151.023 (1982 and Supp. 1988-1989), requirements for the filing of security, § 151.251 et seq., reporting requirements, §151.401 et seq., writs of attachment without bond, §151.605, tax liens, §151.608, and the seizure and sale of property to satisfy tax delinquencies, §151.610.
II
Having found that this statute does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, I must consider whether it violates the Press Clause, pursuant to our decision two Terms ago in Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221 (1987). Although I dissented in Ragland, even accepting it to be correct I cannot conclude as readily as does Justice White, ante, at 26, that it applies here.
The tax exemption at issue in Ragland, which we held to be unconstitutional because rontent based, applied to trade publications and sports magazines along with religious periodicals and sacred writings, and hence could not be justified as an accommodation of religion. If the purpose of accommodating religion can support action that might otherwise violate the Establishment Clause, I see no reason why it does not also support action that might otherwise violate the Press Clause or the Speech Clause. To hold otherwise would be to narrow the accommodation principle enormously, leaving it applicable to only nonexpressive religious worship. I do not *45think that is the law. Just as the Constitution sometimes requires accommodation of religious expression despite not only the Establishment Clause but also the Speech and Press Clauses, so also it sometimes ■permits accommodation despite all those Clauses. Such accommodation is unavoidably content based — because the Freedom of Religion Clause is content based.
It is absurd to think that a State which chooses to prohibit booksellers from making stories about seduction available to children of tender years cannot make an exception for stories contained in sacred writings (e. g., the story of Susanna and the Two Elders, Daniel 13:1-65). And it is beyond imagination that the sort of tax exemption permitted (indeed, required) by Murdock and Follett would have to be withdrawn if door-to-door salesmen of commercial magazines demanded equal treatment with Seventh-day Adventists on Press Clause grounds. And it is impossible to believe that the State is constitutionally prohibited from taxing Texas Monthly magazine more heavily than the Holy Bible.
* * *
Today’s decision introduces a new strain of irrationality in our Religion Clause jurisprudence. I have no idea how to reconcile it with Zorach (which seems a much harder case of accommodation), with Walz (which seems precisely in point), and with Corporation of Presiding Bishop (on which the ink is hardly dry). It is not right — it is not constitutionally healthy — that this Court should feel authorized to refashion anew our civil society’s relationship with religion, adopting a theory of church and state that is contradicted by current practice, tradition, and even our own case law. I dissent.

Only Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon do not have state sales taxes.

See Ala. Code §40-23-62(20) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from use tax “religious magazines and publications”); Fla. Stat. §212.06(9) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from sales and use tax “the sale or distribution of religious publications, bibles, hymn books, prayer books,” and other religious material); Ga. Code Ann. §48-8-3(15)(A) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from sales tax religious newspapers owned and operated by religious institutions); § 48-8-3(16) (exempting from sales tax sales of “Holy Bibles, testaments and similar books commonly recognized as being Holy Scripture”); Idaho Code § 63-36221 (Supp. 1988) (exempting from sales and use tax the sale of “religious literature, pamphlets, periodicals, tracts, and books” if published and sold by “a bona fide church or religious denomination”); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 36, §1760(13) (1978) (exempting from sales tax “[s]ales of the Bible and also other books and literature . . . used in and by established churches for religion and prayer”); Md. Ann. Code, Art. 81, § 326(u) (1980) (exempting from sales tax all sales by “bona fide church or religious organization”); Mass. Gen. Laws § 64H:6(m) (1986) (exempting from sales tax “books used for religious worship”); N. J. Stat. Ann. § 54:32B-8.25 (West 1986) (exempting from sales tax “receipts from sales of the Bible or similar sacred scripture”); N. C. Gen. Stat. §105-164.13(14) (1985) (exempting from sales tax “Holy Bibles”); N. D. Cent. Code §57-39.2-04(25) (1983) (exempting from sales tax “Bibles, hymnals, textbooks, and prayerbooks” sold to religious organizations); Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 72, § 7204(28) (Purdon Supp. 1988-1989) (exempting from sales tax “the sale at retail or use of religious publications . . . and Bibles”); R. I. Gen. Laws § 44-18-30(HH) (Supp. 1987) (exempting from sales tax “any canonized scriptures of any tax-exempt non-profit religious organizations including but not limited to the old testament and new testament versions”); S. C. Code § 12-35-550(7) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from sales and use tax sales “of . . . religious publications, including the Holy Bible”); Tenn. Code Ann. §67-6-323 (1983) (exempting from sales and use tax sales of “religious publications to *31or by churches”); Tex. Tax Code Ann. § 151.312 (1982) (exempting from sales tax religious periodicals and sacred books).

See, in addition to n. 2, supra, Ala. Code §40-9-1(6) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from property tax “libraries of ministers of the gospel” and “all religious books kept for sale by ministers of the gospel and colporteurs”); Alaska Stat. Ann. § 29.45.030(b)(1) (1986) (exempting from property tax residence of “bishop, pastor, priest, rabbi, [or] minister”); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 42-1310.14(A) (Supp. 1988-1989) (exempting from transaction privilege tax “projects of bona fide religious . . . institutions”); Ark. Code Ann. § 26-52-401 (Supp. 1987) (extending property tax exemption for religious and charitable institutions to religious recreational centers, day-care centers, and parsonages); Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. §6363.5 (West 1987) (exempting from sales tax meals and food products furnished by or served by any religious institution); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 39-3-102 (1982) (establishing special property tax exemption for first $16,000 in valuation of each parsonage); Conn. Gen. Stat. § 12-81(12) (1983) (exempting from personal property tax personal property of “a Connecticut religious organization” used for “religious or charitable purposes”); § 12-81(15) (exempting from property tax homes of clergymen owned by religious organizations); D. C. Code §47-1002(15) (1987) (exempting from property tax pastoral residences); § 47-1002(16) (exempting from property tax bishops’ residences); Ga. Code Ann. §48-5-41(a)(3) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from property tax residences for pastors owned by religious organizations); Haw. Rev. Stat. § 244D-4(b)(4) (Supp. 1987) (exempting from liquor tax- spirits sold or *32used for “sacramental purposes”); Haw. Rev. Stat. § 246 — 32(b)(3) (1985) (exempting from property tax parsonages); Idaho Code § 63-3622J (Supp. 1988) (exempting from sales tax sales of meals by churches); Ill. Rev. Stat., eh. 120, *1500.2 (1987) (exempting from property tax parsonages and bishops’ residences); Ind. Code §6-1.1-10-36.3 (1988) (exempting from property tax parsonages); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 79-3602(j) (1984) (exempting from sales tax sale by religious organization “of tangible personal property acquired for . . . resale”); Ky. Const. § 170 (exempting from property tax parsonages); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §47:47 (West 1970) (excluding from state income tax rental income of parsonage of “minister of the gospel”); Md. Ann. Code, Art. 81, §326(c)(i) (1980) (exempting from sales tax sales of food by religious organizations); Mass. Gen. Laws § 59:5, Eleventh (1986) (exempting from local property tax parsonages and official residences of other religious officials); Mich. Comp. Laws § 205.54a(b)(ii) (Supp. 1988-1989) (exempting from sales tax sales of vehicles “used primarily for the transportation of persons for religious purposes”); Mich. Comp. Laws § 211.7s (1986) (exempting from property tax parsonages); Miss. Code Ann. § 27-ll-43(b) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from amusement tax programs “composed entirely of gospel singing and not generally mixed with hillbilly or popular singing”); § 27 — 33—19(d) (exempting from property tax homes of “ministerfs] of the gospel”); Mo. Rev. Stat. § 144.450(5) (1986) (exempting from use tax motor vehicles “owned and used by religious organizations” to transfer students to religious schools); Mont. Code Ann. § 15-6-201(b) (1987) (exempting from property tax “residences of the clergy”); Neb. Rev. Stat. § 77-2702(6)(d) (Supp. 1987) (exempting from sales tax occasional sales “by an organization created exclusively for religious purposes”); § 77-2704(l)(g)(ii) (exempting from sales tax meals served by church at church function); Nev. Rev. Stat. §361.125(1) (1986) (exempting from property tax parsonages); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 72:23 (III) (1970) (exempting from property tax “church parsonages”); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 72:23(VI) (Supp. 1988) (exempting religious organizations from reporting requirements for other nonprofit institutions); N. J. Stat. Ann. §54:4-3.35 (West 1986) (exempting from property tax residences of “district supervisors of religious organizations"); N. M. Stat. Ann. § 7-9-41 (1988) (exempting fi'om receipts tax “receipts of a minister of a religious organization . . . from religious services”); N. Y. Real Prop. Tax Law § 436 (McKinney 1984) (exempting from property tax property held in trust by clergymen); § 462 (exempting from property tax residences of “of*33ficiating clergymen”); N. D. Cent. Code §57-02-08(7) (Supp. 1987) (exempting from property tax dwellings of bishops, priests, rectors, or ministers); Okla. Stat., Tit. 68, § 1356(F) (Supp. 1989) (exempting from sales tax sales of meals made “to or by churches”); R. I. Gen. Laws § 44-3-3 (Supp. 1987) (exempting from property tax residences of clergymen); S. D. Codified Laws § 35-5-6(2) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from beverage tax sacramental wine); Tex. Tax Code Ann. §§ 11.20(a)(3) and (4) (Supp. 1988-1989) (exempting from property tax dwellings of religious clergy); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 32, § 3802(4) (1981) (exempting from property tax parsonages for ministers); Va. Code §58.1-3617 (Supp. 1988) (exempting from property tax vehicles “owned by churches and used for church purposes”); § 58.1-608(38) (exempting from sales tax “property . . . purchased by churches” for use in religious services by a congregation); 'Wash. Rev. Code § 66.20.020(3) (1987) (exempting from licensing requirements “wine [used] for sacramental purposes”); Wash. Rev. Code § 84.36.020 (1987) (exempting from property tax parsonages); W. Va. Code § 11-3-9 (1987) (exempting from property tax parsonages); Wis. Stat. §70.11(4) (1985-1986) (exempting from property tax “housing for pastors”); Wyo. Stat. § 39-1-201 (a)(vii) (Supp. 1988) (exempting from property tax “church parsonages”).