Sloan v. Lemon

Sloan v. Lemon, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 25, 1973, struck down (6–3) a Pennsylvania state law that had provided partial reimbursement to parents for the cost of their children’s tuition at private schools, including parochial schools. Applying a test devised by the Supreme Court two years earlier in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the court held that the statute violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause, because it had “the impermissible effect of advancing religion.”

In Lemon v. Kurtzman the Supreme Court had considered whether state laws in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania that authorized aid to private schools were constitutional. Both laws were aimed at improving secular education within private, primarily parochial elementary and secondary schools. The Rhode Island law provided funding to supplement the salaries of teachers of secular courses, and the Pennsylvania statute authorized state funding for various expenses related to secular instruction. In its decision, the court articulated its so-called Lemon test for determining whether a law or policy violates the establishment clause (which prohibits Congress from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion”). Under the Lemon test, a law or policy is consistent with the establishment clause if (1) it has “a secular legislative purpose,” (2) “its principal or primary effect is one that neither advances nor inhibits religion” (i.e., it is neutral with respect to religion), and (3) it does not foster an “excessive entanglement” between government and religion. The court found that both laws were unconstitutional because the state bureaucracy that would have been required to ensure that public funds were used only to support secular instruction constituted an excessive entanglement.

Two months after Lemon v. Kurtzman was decided, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a law authorizing direct reimbursements to parents for their children’s tuition at parochial and other private schools. Seeking to avoid the entanglement issue that had doomed its previous aid statute, the General Assembly specifically provided that the government would have no control over the policies, personnel, curricula, or administration of the private schools involved. The law similarly imposed no restrictions or limitations on how the reimbursements could be used by qualifying parents.

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The law was immediately challenged in U.S. district court, where it was found to be in violation of the establishment clause. The district court also determined that there was no severable provision of the law that could be upheld to enable the continuation of reimbursements for tuition at nonsectarian private schools. The state then appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which scheduled the case to be heard with several similar suits that had been appealed from New York state and consolidated as Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist. Oral arguments took place on April 16, 1973.

In a majority opinion written by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., the Supreme Court noted that Pennsylvania had selected a class of its citizens for a “special economic benefit,” which could be characterized in various ways. However,

Whether that benefit be viewed as a simple tuition subsidy, as an incentive to parents to send their children to sectarian schools, or as a reward for having done so, at bottom its intended consequence is to preserve and support religion-oriented institutions.

Ironically, while trying to avoid the church-state entanglement prohibited by the third prong of the Lemon test, the Pennsylvania General Assembly had passed a law that the Supreme Court viewed as clearly advancing the cause of religion, a direct violation of the second prong of the test. Accordingly, the Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s judgment that the Pennsylvania statute was unconstitutional under the establishment clause; it also agreed with the district court that no provision for tuition assistance for nonsectarian private schools could survive.

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Powell’s opinion was joined by Justices Harry A. Blackmun, William Brennan, William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, and Potter Stewart. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices William Rehnquist and Byron R. White.