Supreme Court Case Summary

Facts: Alton Lemon took David Kurtzman to court with the support of a number of interest groups including the Pennsylvania Civil liberties union and the NAACP in hopes the court would find a law in Pennsylvania unconstitutional. This said law, the Nonpublic Elementary and secondary education act, had allowed Kurtzman to “purchase” educational services for private schools, and could use tax money to reimburse private school for the cost of salaries as well as books and supplies. The state agreed to provide funding as long as the money went towards secular expenses, meaning the books and supplies that were meant for teaching the same courses that were taught in public schools. In order to receive money, there had to be records of secular expenses and non secular expenses. This act began to be able to be put to use in July of 1968. Ultimately, “96% of the nonpublic school students attended religious schools, primarily roman catholic”(Epstein. Walker 147). In Rhode Island, there was a similar law, the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act, where 15% of the teachers salaries were funded to contribute to private schools, as long as no religious classes were taught. It turned out though that 95% of the

Do the laws violate the laws regarding separating church and state? The holding of the case was that these laws were in violation of the establishment clause. In deciding the case, the supreme court created the Lemon test in order to be sure that any law in the future does not violate the establishment clause. The Lemon Test says that the law here needs to have a secular purpose, (a secular legislative purpose), a primary effect, meaning it cannot help or hurt religion, and three excessive entanglement which means a law cannot cause the government to become intertwined with any