Religion
Related: About this forumAnyone see a possible, viable 1st Amendment challenge in regards to separation of church and state?
It seems the separation clause is being incrementally dismantled or re-interpreted. Is there a situation that could be a test case?
The gay communities, allies and others are making great progress in challenges based in the 14th Amendment. We are making great gains, socially and judicially.
Does anyone see some similar challenges we could coalesce around to support in separation of church and state terms?
okasha
(11,573 posts)to political organizations that endorse a particular religious viewpoint, eg., the Texas Republican Party's declaration that the US is "a Christian nation." We've managed to fight them off over creationism in biology texts, but the adoption of an essentially established religion is an even graver danger.
edhopper
(33,575 posts)The SCOTUS looses it's conservative majority. The care more about their agenda then the Constitution.
rug
(82,333 posts)It's worth a read. The facts of this case are egregious. The Supreme Court 20 years ago kept the line but it's bound to be revisited. The Village of Kiryas Joel is now engaged in an attempt to expand its size by annexing parts of its neighboring towns of Monroe and Woodbury.
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/245163/kiryas-joel-looking-to-expand.html
It's the closest example of true theocracy I've ever heard of in this country, including the FDLS settlements. Consequently it has, and will continue, to test the boundaries of the Establishment Clause.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)from the pulpit.
The IRS has recently agreed to start paying more attention to this and it is going to be very interesting to follow.
It's a 1st amendment issue that is also connected to the tax exempt status given to religious organizations.
Brettongarcia
(2,262 posts)Colorado?
pinto
(106,886 posts)trotsky
(49,533 posts)However, the latest roadblock to be used is the issue of the plaintiff's "standing." The bar seems to be set now that someone has to show they were harmed by government-sponsored religious belief directly, and has standing to sue. This is how Michael Newdow's suit against "under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance was dismissed.
I wish we could just go back to the Lemon test.
rug
(82,333 posts)There are solid reasons to require it before subjecting anyone to a lawsuit.
pinto
(106,886 posts)The purpose of the Lemon test is to determine when a law has the effect of establishing religion. The test has served as the foundation for many of the Court's post-1971 establishment clause rulings. As articulated by Chief Justice Burger, the test has three parts:
First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."
According to separationist scholars Barry Lynn, Marc Stern, and Oliver Thomas, the fact that a law may have a "religious purpose or be motivated by religion does not mean it is unconstitutional as long as it also has a bona fide secular or civic purpose" (The Right to Religious Liberty, p. 3). Similarly, "a law that has a remote or incidental effect of advancing religion is not unconstitutional as long as the effect is not a 'primary' effect" (p. 3). Finally, the Court has allowed some entanglement between church and state, as long as this entanglement is not "excessive" (p. 3). Hence, the Court has built some leeway into the test so as not to invalidate laws that have only remote connections to religious practice. This is not, in other words, the work of a Court that was hostile to religion. On the contrary, Justice Burger, a Nixon appointee, is generally reckoned as a conservative on social issues.
We note also that the Lemon test is squarely grounded on the principles articulated in Everson v. Board of Education. Accomodationist legal scholar Stephen Monsma, for example, notes that Burger's opinion is:
Deeply embedded in...the sacred-secular distinction and the Supreme Court's evaluation of the state's attempts to separate out the two and subsidize only the latter. His opinion noted that at the trial-court level several teachers had testified "they did not inject religion into their secular classes." And the District Court found that religious values did not necessarily affect the content of secular instruction. Burger agreed, but made the additional, crucial observation that "the potential for impermissible fostering of religion is present." He then went on to conclude that under such circumstances state attempts to assure a strict separation of the sacred and the secular would require continuing state administrative supervision and surveillance, resulting in state entanglement with religion (When Sacred and Secular Mix: Religious Non-Profit Organizations and Public Money, pp. 32-33).
http://candst.tripod.com/tnppage/eclause2.htm