Lemon v. Kurtzman

The Court struck down state salary supplements for teachers in religious schools and announced a three-part test for Establishment Clause cases.

Overview

Pennsylvania and Rhode Island programs reimbursed or supplemented salaries of teachers of secular subjects in church-affiliated, mostly Catholic, schools. Chief Justice Warren Burger held the programs unconstitutional and set out what became the Lemon test: a law must have a secular purpose, its primary effect must neither advance nor inhibit religion, and it must not foster excessive government entanglement with religion. The test governed Establishment Clause cases for decades, though justices increasingly criticized it as unpredictable. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District in 2022, the Court stated that it had long ago abandoned Lemon in favor of history and tradition.