Lemon v. Kurtzman
Citation and Court
403 U.S. 602 (1971). United States Supreme Court. Chief Justice Burger, writing for the Court (8-0 on the Pennsylvania statute, 8-1 on the Rhode Island statute).
Facts
Pennsylvania’s Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Rhode Island’s Salary Supplement Act provided state financial aid to religious (primarily Catholic) schools. Pennsylvania’s law reimbursed private schools for teachers’ salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials for secular subjects. Rhode Island’s law provided salary supplements to teachers of secular subjects in private elementary schools. Alton Lemon and other plaintiffs challenged both statutes as violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Issue
Do state statutes providing financial aid — including teacher salary supplements — to religious schools violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment?
Holding
Yes. Both statutes violated the Establishment Clause because they created excessive entanglement between government and religion, as states would need to monitor religious schools to ensure that funded secular instruction was not being used to advance religious teaching.
Rule / Doctrine
The Lemon Test: A law does not violate the Establishment Clause only if it satisfies all three prongs: (1) the law must have a secular legislative purpose; (2) its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and (3) the law must not foster excessive government entanglement with religion. Failure of any single prong renders the law unconstitutional.
Significance
Lemon v. Kurtzman provided the dominant framework for Establishment Clause analysis for decades. The Lemon test was applied in hundreds of cases involving prayer in public schools, religious displays on public property, and government funding of religious institutions. However, the test has been heavily criticized and in Shurtleff v. City of Boston (2022) and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) the Court effectively sidelined Lemon in favor of a historical tradition and practices approach, formally overruling Lemon’s analytical test in Kennedy.