Significance: This case established the “Lemon test” for determining whether laws violate the First Amendment separation of church and state.
Background: In 1968 Pennsylvania passed a law that allowed the state to pay teachers who taught nonreligious subjects in religious or other private schools. Alton Lemon—a citizen, taxpayer, and parent whose child who attended a Pennsylvania public school—claimed that the use of tax dollars to support these teachers violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Thus, he sued David Kurtzman, the superintendent of the local school system.
Decision: This case was argued on March 3, 1971, and decided on June 28, 1971, by a vote of 7 to 0. Chief Justice Warren Burger spoke for the Court; Justices William Brennan and Byron White concurred in part and dissented in part, and Justice Thurgood Marshall did not participate. As the Court considered the Pennsylvania law, it took the opportunity to rule on a very similar law in Rhode Island. It found that both laws caused an excessive entanglement between church and state in two ways. First, the laws would allow government funding to go to teachers in religious environments who might include their faith or moral beliefs in their teaching of nonreligious subjects. Second, the monitoring that would be needed to prevent this outcome would entangle church and state even further. Therefore, the Court ruled that the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island laws were unconstitutional.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “The sole question is whether state aid to these schools can be squared with the dictates of the Religion Clauses. Under our system the choice has been made that government is to be entirely excluded from the area of religious instruction and churches excluded from the affairs of government. The Constitution decrees that religion must be a private matter for the individual, the family, and the institutions of private choice, and that while some involvement and entanglement are inevitable, lines must be drawn.”
