The Lemon Test Adversely Affects Religious Freedom
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This webpage contains collected excerpts from, or hyperlinks to, some judicial opinions, plus added commentary by Belcher Foundation (Editor's Notes), pertaining to the three-prong test in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), including quoted excerpts from Lemon itself (located in the latter part of this webpage). This collection of excerpts and links does not exhaust the criticism of Lemon found scattered throughout numerous judicial opinions. See especially United States Supreme Court Justice Scalia's critique of Lemon in his Dissent in McCreary County, Kentucky v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, 545 U. S. ___ (2005). See also Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U. S. ___ (2005) (see also Thomas, J., concurring). See generally the Christian Law Library for links to some other judicial opinions (e.g., Judge Ryan's Dissent in American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky v. McCreary County, Kentucky, 354 F.3d 438, 463-482 (6th Cir. 2003); Dissent in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 610-640 (1987) (Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist); Dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) (Rehnquist, J.), and Books v. Elkhart County, Indiana, 401 F.3d 857 (7th Cir. 2005) (Sykes, J.). See also the critique of the Lemon test found within the Belcher Foundation commentary Acknowledging the Almighty.]
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an excerpted quote from Judge Barrett's dissent in Roberts v. Madigan, 921 F.2d 1047, 1063-1064 (10th Cir. 1990) (Barrett, Senior Circuit Judge, dissenting):]
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The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment mandates that the government not prohibit or interfere with the free exercise of religion. The clause imposes a burden on the government to facilitate the free exercise of religion. In that sense, the government is promoting a religious purpose and if the first and second prongs of the Lemon test were to apply, the Free Exercise Clause would necessarily fall because the government would not be pursuing a secular purpose, and the primary effect would be to advance religion.
In Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S.Ct. 2479, 86 L.Ed.2d 29 (1985), the Supreme Court struck down an Alabama statute authorizing a 1-minute period of silence in all public schools for "meditation or voluntary prayer" because the majority held that the established purpose was to endorse religion, and the enactment was not motivated by any clearly secular purpose. The Court majority applied the Lemon test.
Then-Chief Justice Warren Burger, in his dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree, made the following pertinent observations with which I agree and which I believe to be fully consistent with the majority opinion in Lynch v. Donnelly, supra, and applicable here:
[T]he Court's extended treatment of the 'test' of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971) suggests a naive pre-occupation with an easy, bright-line approach for addressing constitutional issues. We have repeatedly cautioned that Lemon did not establish a rigid caliper capable of resolving every Establishment Clause issue, but that it sought only to provide 'signposts ....' [O]ur responsibility is not to apply tidy formulas by rote; our duty is to determine whether the statute or practice at issue is a step toward establishing a state religion.
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[T]he statute does not remotely threaten religious liberty; it affirmatively furthers the values of religious freedom and tolerance that the Establishment Clause was designed to protect. Without pressuring those who do not wish to pray, the statute simply creates an opportunity to think, to plan, or to pray if one wishes--as Congress does by providing chaplains and chapels. It accommodates the purely private, voluntary religious choices of the individual pupils who wish to pray while at the same time creating a time for non-religious reflection for those who do not choose to pray. The statute also provides a meaningful opportunity for school children to appreciate the absolute constitutional right of each individual to worship and believe as the individual wishes. The statute 'endorses' only the view that the religious observances of others should be tolerated and, where possible, accommodated. If the government may not accommodate religious needs when it does so in a wholly neutral and non-coercive manner, the 'benevolent neutrality' that we have long considered the correct constitutional standard will quickly translate into the 'callous indifference' that the Court has consistently held the Establishment Clause does not require. (Emphasis supplied).
472 U.S. at pp. 89-90, 105 S.Ct. at pp. 2506-07.
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[EDITOR'S NOTE: See also the critique of the Lemon test in the latter part of United States Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist's Dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S.Ct. 2479 (1985).]
[EDITOR'S NOTE and COMMENTARY: The following are excerpts from the Opinion of the Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 606, 612-615, 618-619 (1971) (Burger, C.J.) that illustrate the problem with applying the Lemon test--that is, the Court itself somehow thinks that "respecting" is a lower standard than "establishment" but that both can violate the Establishment Clause (when "respecting" simply means "pertaining to" or "regarding" an establishment). Id. at 612. Hence, from this opinion one can infer that a law can be unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause even if it doesn't actually establish a state religion, but if it can be speculated that it someday might do so: "A given law might not establish a state religion but nevertheless be one 'respecting' that end in the sense of being a step that could lead to such establishment and hence offend the First Amendment." Id. (emphasis added). This makes the Lemon v. Kurtzman decision speculative and problematic and, in certain passages, inconsistent. For instance, one paragraph (p. 614) states: "Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense."--but a later paragraph (pp. 618-619) asserts a potential or possible problem with the ability of parochial school teachers to maintain "a total separation between secular teaching and religious doctrine." Id. at 619. The test is also subjective, as this quote on p. 619 illustrates: "What would appear to some to be essential to good citizenship might well for others border on or constitute instruction in religion." This subjectivity is what creates, unnecessarily, the potential entanglement: "A comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance will inevitably be required to ensure that these restrictions are obeyed and the First Amendment otherwise respected. Unlike a book, a teacher cannot be inspected once so as to determine the extent and intent of his or her personal beliefs and subjective acceptance of the limitations imposed by the First Amendment. These prophylactic contacts will involve excessive and enduring entanglement between state and church." Id. at 619. So the "entanglement" or non-separation of church and state is created by the state focusing on the teacher's personal, private religious beliefs. But this impinges on freedom of conscience. Furthermore, the opinion, on p. 624, makes an interesting point: "In Walz it was argued that a tax exemption for places of religious worship would prove to be the first step in an inevitable progression leading to the establishment of state churches and state religion. That claim could not stand up against more than 200 years of virtually universal practice imbedded in our colonial experience and continuing into the present. The progression argument, however, is more persuasive here." In actuality, what happened was that Lemon v. Kurtzman itself (through application of the "Lemon test") "prove[d] to be the first step in an inevitable progression" leading to ever-greater adverse effects on religious freedom. Id. at 624. (Note: Following the Opinion of the Court is reproduced excerpts from Mr. Justice White's concurrence/dissent: Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 661-671 (1971) (footnote 2 omitted).)]:
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER delivered the opinion of the Court.
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The language of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment is at best opaque, particularly when compared with other portions of the Amendment. Its authors did not simply prohibit the establishment of a state church or a state religion, an area history shows they regarded as very important and fraught with great dangers. Instead they commanded that there should be "no law respecting an establishment of religion." A law may be one "respecting" the forbidden objective while falling short of its total realization. A law "respecting" the proscribed result, that is, the establishment of religion, is not always easily identifiable as one violative of the Clause. A given law might not establish a state religion but nevertheless be one "respecting" that end in the sense of being a step that could lead to such establishment and hence offend the First Amendment.
In the absence of precisely stated constitutional prohibitions, we must draw lines with reference to the three main evils against which the Establishment Clause was intended to afford protection: "sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity." Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U. S. 664, 668 (1970).
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 (1968); finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion." Walz, supra, at 674.
Inquiry into the legislative purposes of the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island statutes affords no basis for a conclusion that the legislative intent was to advance religion. On the contrary, the statutes themselves clearly state that they are intended to enhance the quality of the secular education in all schools covered by the compulsory attendance laws. There is no reason to believe the legislatures meant anything else. A State always has a legitimate concern for maintaining minimum standards in all schools it allows to operate. As in Allen, we find nothing here that undermines the stated legislative intent; it must therefore be accorded appropriate deference.
In Allen the Court acknowledged that secular and religious teachings were not necessarily so intertwined that secular textbooks furnished to students by the State were in fact instrumental in the teaching of religion. 392 U. S., at 248. The legislatures of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have concluded that secular and religious education are identifiable and separable. In the abstract we have no quarrel with this conclusion.
The two legislatures, however, have also recognized that church-related elementary and secondary schools have a significant religious mission and that a substantial portion of their activities is religiously oriented. They have therefore sought to create statutory restrictions designed to guarantee the separation between secular and religious educational functions and to ensure that State financial aid supports only the former. All these provisions are precautions taken in candid recognition that these programs approached, even if they did not intrude upon, the forbidden areas under the Religion Clauses. We need not decide whether these legislative precautions restrict the principal or primary effect of the programs to the point where they do not offend the Religion Clauses, for we conclude that the cumulative impact of the entire relationship arising under the statutes in each State involves excessive entanglement between government and religion.
III
In Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, the Court upheld state tax exemptions for real property owned by religious organizations and used for religious worship. That holding, however, tended to confine rather than enlarge the area of permissible state involvement with religious institutions by calling for close scrutiny of the degree of entanglement involved in the relationship. The objective is to prevent, as far as possible, the intrusion of either into the precincts of the other.
Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 312 (1952); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398, 422 (1963) (HARLAN, J., dissenting). [***] Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship.
This is not to suggest, however, that we are to engage in a legalistic minuet in which precise rules and forms must govern. A true minuet is a matter of pure form and style, the observance of which is itself the substantive end. Here we examine the form of the relationship for the light that it casts on the substance.
In order to determine whether the government entanglement with religion is excessive, we must examine 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. MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, in a separate opinion in Walz, supra, echoed the classic warning as to "programs, whose very nature is apt to entangle the state in details of administration ...." Id., at 695. Here we find that both statutes foster an impermissible degree of entanglement.
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We need not and do not assume that teachers in parochial schools will be guilty of bad faith or any conscious design to evade the limitations imposed by the statute and the First Amendment. We simply recognize that a dedicated religious person, teaching in a school affiliated with his or her faith and operated to inculcate its tenets, will inevitably experience great difficulty in remaining religiously neutral. Doctrines and faith are not inculcated or advanced by neutrals. With the best of intentions such a teacher would find it hard to make a total separation between secular teaching and religious doctrine. What would appear to some to be essential to good citizenship might well for others border on or constitute instruction in religion. Further difficulties are inherent in the combination of religious discipline and the possibility of disagreement between teacher and religious authorities over the meaning of the statutory restrictions.
We do not assume, however, that parochial school teachers will be unsuccessful in their attempts to segregate their religious beliefs from their secular educational responsibilities. But the potential for impermissible fostering of religion is present. The Rhode Island Legislature has not, and could not, provide state aid on the basis of a mere assumption that secular teachers under religious discipline can avoid conflicts. The State must be certain, given the Religion Clauses, that subsidized teachers do not inculcate religion--indeed the State here has undertaken to do so. To ensure that no trespass occurs, the State has therefore carefully conditioned its aid with pervasive restrictions. An eligible recipient must teach only those courses that are offered in the public schools and use only those texts and materials that are found in the public schools. In addition the teacher must not engage in teaching any course in religion.
A comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance will inevitably be required to ensure that these restrictions are obeyed and the First Amendment otherwise respected. Unlike a book, a teacher cannot be inspected once so as to determine the extent and intent of his or her personal beliefs and subjective acceptance of the limitations imposed by the First Amendment. These prophylactic contacts will involve excessive and enduring entanglement between state and church.
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MR. JUSTICE WHITE, concurring in the judgments in No. 153 (post, p. 672) and No. 89 and dissenting in Nos. 569 and 570.
It is our good fortune that the States of this country long ago recognized that instruction of the young and old ranks high on the scale of proper governmental functions and not only undertook secular education as a public responsibility but also required compulsory attendance at school by their young. Having recognized the value of educated citizens and assumed the task of educating them, the States now before us assert a right to provide for the secular education of children whether they attend public schools or choose to enter private institutions, even when those institutions are church-related. The Federal Government also asserts that it is entitled, where requested, to contribute to the cost of secular education by furnishing buildings and facilities to all institutions of higher learning, public and private alike. Both the United States and the States urge that if parents choose to have their children receive instruction in the required secular subjects in a school where religion is also taught and a religious atmosphere may prevail, part or all of the cost of such secular instruction may be paid for by governmental grants to the religious institution conducting the school and seeking the grant. Those who challenge this position would bar official contributions to secular education where the family prefers the parochial to both the public and nonsectarian private school.
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But, while the decision of the Court is legitimate, it is surely quite wrong in overturning the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island statutes on the ground that they amount to an establishment of religion forbidden by the First Amendment.
No one in these cases questions the constitutional right of parents to satisfy their state-imposed obligation to educate their children by sending them to private schools, sectarian or otherwise, as long as those schools meet minimum standards established for secular instruction. The States are not only permitted, but required by the Constitution, to free students attending private schools from any public school attendance obligation. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925). The States may also furnish transportation for students, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1 (1947), and books for teaching secular subjects to students attending parochial and other private as well as public schools, Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236 (1968); we have also upheld arrangements whereby students are released from public school classes so that they may attend religious instruction. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306 (1952). Outside the field of education, we have upheld Sunday closing laws, McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420 (1961), state and federal laws exempting church property and church activity from taxation, Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U. S. 664 (1970), and governmental grants to religious organizations for the purpose of financing improvements in the facilities of hospitals managed and controlled by religious orders. Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U. S. 291 (1899).
Our prior cases have recognized the dual role of parochial schools in American society: they perform both religious and secular functions. See Board of Education v. Allen, supra, at 248. Our cases also recognize that legislation having a secular purpose and extending governmental assistance to sectarian schools in the performance of their secular functions does not constitute "law[s] respecting an establishment of religion" forbidden by the First Amendment merely because a secular program may incidentally benefit a church in fulfilling its religious mission. That religion may indirectly benefit from governmental aid to the secular activities of churches does not convert that aid into an impermissible establishment of religion.
This much the Court squarely holds in the Tilton case, where it also expressly rejects the notion that payments made directly to a religious institution are, without more, forbidden by the First Amendment. In Tilton, the Court decides that the Federal Government may finance the separate function of secular education carried on in a parochial setting. It reaches this result although sectarian institutions undeniably will obtain substantial benefit from federal aid; without federal funding to provide adequate facilities for secular education, the student bodies of those institutions might remain stationary or even decrease in size and the institutions might ultimately have to close their doors.
It is enough for me that the States and the Federal Government are financing a separable secular function of overriding importance in order to sustain the legislation here challenged. That religion and private interests other than education may substantially benefit does not convert these laws into impermissible establishments of religion.
It is unnecessary, therefore, to urge that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment at least permits government in some respects to modify and mold its secular programs out of express concern for free-exercise values. See Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 673 (tax exemption for religious properties; "[t]he limits of permissible state accommodation to religion are by no means coextensive with the noninterference mandated by the Free Exercise Clause. To equate the two would be to deny a national heritage with roots in the Revolution itself"); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963) (exemption of Seventh Day Adventist from eligibility requirements for unemployment insurance not only permitted but required by the Free Exercise Clause); Zorach v. Clauson, supra, at 313-314 (students excused from regular public school routine to obtain religious instruction; "[w]hen the state encourages religious instruction ... it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs"). See also Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 308 (1963) (STEWART, J., dissenting); Welsh v. United States, 398 U. S. 333, 367 (1970) (WHITE, J., dissenting). The Establishment Clause, however, coexists in the First Amendment with the Free Exercise Clause and the latter is surely relevant in cases such as these. Where a state program seeks to ensure the proper education of its young, in private as well as public schools, free exercise considerations at least counsel against refusing support for students attending parochial schools simply because in that setting they are also being instructed in the tenets of the faith they are constitutionally free to practice.
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The Court strikes down the Rhode Island statute on its face. No fault is found with the secular purpose of the program; there is no suggestion that the purpose of the program was aid to religion disguised in secular attire. Nor does the Court find that the primary effect of the program is to aid religion rather than to implement secular goals. The Court nevertheless finds that impermissible "entanglement" will result from administration of the program. The reasoning is a curious and mystifying blend, but a critical factor appears to be an unwillingness to accept the District Court's express findings that on the evidence before it none of the teachers here involved mixed religious and secular instruction. Rather, the District Court struck down the Rhode Island statute because it concluded that activities outside the secular classroom would probably have a religious content and that support for religious education therefore necessarily resulted from the financial aid to the secular programs, since that aid generally strengthened the parochial schools and increased the number of their students.
In view of the decision in Tilton, however, where these same factors were found insufficient to invalidate the federal plan, the Court is forced to other considerations. Accepting the District Court's observation in DiCenso that education is an integral part of the religious mission of the Catholic church--an observation that should neither surprise nor alarm anyone, especially judges who have already approved substantial aid to parochial schools in various forms--the majority then interposes findings and conclusions that the District Court expressly abjured, namely, that nuns, clerics, and dedicated Catholic laymen unavoidably pose a grave risk in that they might not be able to put aside their religion in the secular classroom. Although stopping short of considering them untrustworthy, the Court concludes that for them the difficulties of avoiding teaching religion along with secular subjects would pose intolerable risks and would in any event entail an unacceptable enforcement regime. Thus, the potential for impermissible fostering of religion in secular classrooms--an untested assumption of the Court--paradoxically renders unacceptable the State's efforts at insuring that secular teachers under religious discipline successfully avoid conflicts between the religious mission of the school and the secular purpose of the State's education program.
The difficulty with this is twofold. In the first place, it is contrary to the evidence and the District Court's findings in DiCenso. The Court points to nothing in this record indicating that any participating teacher had inserted religion into this secular teaching or had had any difficulty in avoiding doing so. The testimony of the teachers was quite the contrary. The District Court expressly found that "[t]his concern for religious values does not necessarily affect the content of secular subjects in diocesan schools. On the contrary, several teachers testified at trial that they did not inject religion into their secular classes, and one teacher deposed that he taught exactly as he had while employed in a public school. This testimony gains added credibility from the fact that several of the teachers were non-Catholics. Moreover, because of the restrictions of Rhode Island's textbook loan law ... and the explicit requirement of the Salary Supplement Act, teaching materials used by applicants for aid must be approved for use in the public schools." DiCenso v. Robinson, 316 F. Supp. 112, 117 (RI 1970). Elsewhere, the District Court reiterated that the defect of the Rhode Island statute was "not that religious doctrine overtly intrudes into all instruction," ibid., but factors aside from secular courses plus the fact that good secular teaching was itself essential for implementing the religious mission of the parochial school.
Secondly, the Court accepts the model for the Catholic elementary and secondary schools that was rejected for the Catholic universities or colleges in the Tilton case. There it was urged that the Catholic condition of higher learning was an integral part of the religious mission of the church and that these institutions did everything they could to foster the faith. The Court's response was that on the record before it none of the involved institutions was shown to have complied with the model and that it would not purport to pass on cases not before it. Here, however, the Court strikes down this Rhode Island statute based primarily on its own model and its own suppositions and unsupported views of what is likely to happen in Rhode Island parochial school classrooms, although on this record there is no indication that entanglement difficulties will accompany the salary supplement program.
The Court thus creates an insoluble paradox for the State and the parochial schools. The State cannot finance secular instruction if it permits religion to be taught in the same classroom; but if it exacts a promise that religion not be so taught--a promise the school and its teachers are quite willing and on this record able to give--and enforces it, it is then entangled in the "no entanglement" aspect of the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence.
Why the federal program in the Tilton case is not embroiled in the same difficulties is never adequately explained. Surely the notion that college students are more mature and resistant to indoctrination is a makeweight, for in Tilton there is careful note of the federal condition on funding and the enforcement mechanism available. If religious teaching in federally financed buildings was permitted, the powers of resistance of college students would in no way save the federal scheme. Nor can I imagine the basis for finding college clerics more reliable in keeping promises than their counterparts in elementary and secondary schools--particularly those in the Rhode Island case, since within five years the majority of teachers in Rhode Island parochial schools will be lay persons, many of them non-Catholic.
Both the District Court and this Court in DiCenso have seized on the Rhode Island formula for supplementing teachers' salaries since it requires the State to verify the amount of school money spent for secular as distinguished from religious purposes. Only teachers in those schools having per-pupil expenditures for secular subjects below the state average qualify under the system, an aspect of the state scheme which is said to provoke serious "entanglement." But this is also a slender reed on which to strike down this law, for as the District Court found, only once since the inception of the program has it been necessary to segregate expenditures in this manner.
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With respect to Pennsylvania, the Court, accepting as true the factual allegations of the complaint, as it must for purposes of a motion to dismiss, would reverse the dismissal of the complaint and invalidate the legislation. The critical allegations, as paraphrased by the Court, are that "the church-related elementary and secondary schools are controlled by religious organizations, have the purpose of propagating and promoting a particular religious faith, and conduct their operations to fulfill that purpose." Ante, at 620. From these allegations the Court concludes that forbidden entanglements would follow from enforcing compliance with the secular purpose for which the state money is being paid.
I disagree. There is no specific allegation in the complaint that sectarian teaching does or would invade secular classes supported by state funds. That the schools are operated to promote a particular religion is quite consistent with the view that secular teaching devoid of religious instruction can successfully be maintained, for good secular instruction is, as Judge Coffin wrote for the District Court in the Rhode Island case, essential to the success of the religious mission of the parochial school. I would no more here than in the Rhode Island case substitute presumption for proof that religion is or would be taught in state-financed secular courses or assume that enforcement measures would be so extensive as to border on a free exercise violation. We should not forget that the Pennsylvania statute does not compel church schools to accept state funds. I cannot hold that the First Amendment forbids an agreement between the school and the State that the state funds would be used only to teach secular subjects.
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I find it very difficult to follow the distinction between the federal and state programs in terms of their First Amendment acceptability. My difficulty is not surprising, since there is frank acknowledgment that "we can only dimly perceive the boundaries of permissible government activity in this sensitive area of constitutional adjudication," Tilton v. Richardson, post, at 678, and that "[j]udicial caveats against entanglement" are a "blurred, indistinct and variable barrier." Ante, at 614. I find it even more difficult, with these acknowledgments in mind, to understand how the Court can accept the considered judgment of Congress that its program is constitutional and yet reject the equally considered decisions of the Rhode Island and Pennsylvania legislatures that their programs represent a constitutionally acceptable accommodation between church and state. [***]
[EDITOR'S NOTE: For further critique of the Lemon test, see: Acknowledging the Almighty]
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