Lynch v. Donnelly

Notable Items:

Issue(s) Before the Court:

Petitioner's Claim(s):

Respondent's Claim(s):

Holding(s) and Disposition:

Material Facts:

• Each year, ..., the city of Pawtucket, R.I., erects a Christmas display as part of its observance of the Christmas holiday season.
• The display is situated in a park owned by a nonprofit organization and located in the heart of the shopping district.
• The Pawtucket display comprises many of the figures and decorations traditionally associated with Christmas, including, among other things, ... the creche at issue here.
• All components of this display are owned by the city.
• A full recounting of the facts is available below

Procedural History:

• Respondents, Pawtucket residents and individual members of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, and the affiliate itself, brought this action in the United States District Court for Rhode Island, challenging the city's inclusion of the creche in the annual display.
• The District Court held that the city's inclusion of the creche in the display violates the Establishment Clause, ....
• The District Court found that, by including the creche in the Christmas display, the city has "tried to endorse and promulgate religious beliefs,"
• This "appearance of official sponsorship," it believed, "confers more than a remote and incidental benefit on Christianity."
• The city was permanently enjoined from including the creche in the display.
• A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed.
• We granted certiorari, and
• we reverse.

Rationale

Burger Majority Opinion (White, Powell, Rehnquist, O'Connor)

• In the line-drawing process, we have often found it useful to inquire[:] [Lemon Tests]
• whether the challenged law or conduct has a secular purpose, ["exclusively secular" objectives not required Lemon footnote 6]
• whether its principal or primary effect is to advance or inhibit religion, and
• whether it creates an excessive entanglement of government with religion. Lemon, supra.
• The Court has invalidated legislation or governmental action on the ground that a secular purpose was lacking, but only when it has concluded there was no question that the statute or activity was motivated wholly by religious considerations.
• We are satisfied that the city has a secular purpose for including the creche, that the city has not impermissibly advanced religion, and that including the creche does not create excessive entanglement between religion and government. [all three parts of the Lemon Tests]
• A full description of the rationale is available below

O'Connor Concurrance (null)

Brennan Dissent (Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens)

Blackmun Dissent (Stevens)

Full Recounting of Facts

• Each year, ..., the city of Pawtucket, R.I., erects a Christmas display as part of its observance of the Christmas holiday season.
• The display is situated in a park owned by a nonprofit organization and located in the heart of the shopping district.
• The Pawtucket display comprises many of the figures and decorations traditionally associated with Christmas, including, among other things, ... the creche at issue here.
• All components of this display are owned by the city.
• Respondents, Pawtucket residents and individual members of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, and the affiliate itself, brought this action in the United States District Court for Rhode Island, challenging the city's inclusion of the creche in the annual display.
• The District Court held that the city's inclusion of the creche in the display violates the Establishment Clause, ....
• A list of the material facts is available above

Majority Full Argument

• [Part I: Facts of the Case]
• [Part II A: Review of Establishment Clause]
• In every Establishment Clause case, we must reconcile the inescapable tension between the objective of preventing unnecessary intrusion of either the church or the state upon the other, and the reality that, as the Court has so often noted, total separation of the two is not possible.
• Nor does the Constitution require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.
• [Part II B: First Congress History]
• The Court's interpretation of the Establishment Clause has comported with what history reveals was the contemporaneous understanding of its guarantees. [Proto-originalism?]
• ... the first week of the First Session of the First Congress in 1789.
• In the very week that Congress approved the Establishment Clause as part of the Bill of Rights for submission to the states, it enacted legislation providing for paid Chaplains for the House and Senate.
• [Part II C: Later History]
• Executive Orders and other official announcements of Presidents and of the Congress have proclaimed both Christmas and Thanksgiving National Holidays in religious terms.
• And, by Acts of Congress, it has long been the practice that federal employees are released from duties on these National Holidays, ....
• Thus, it is clear that Government has long recognized -- indeed it has subsidized -- holidays with [Christian] religious significance.
• One cannot look at even this brief resume without finding that our history is pervaded by expressions of religious beliefs such as are found in Zorach.
• Equally pervasive is the evidence of accommodation of all faiths and all forms of religious expression, and hostility toward none.
• [Part III: Application of Precedent ]
• ... an absolutist approach in applying the Establishment Clause is simplistic, and has been uniformly rejected by the Court.
• ... the Court has scrutinized challenged legislation or official conduct to determine whether, in reality, it establishes a religion or religious faith, or tends to do so.
• In the line-drawing process, we have often found it useful to inquire[:] [Lemon Tests]
• whether the challenged law or conduct has a secular purpose, ["exclusively secular" objectives not required Lemon footnote 6]
• whether its principal or primary effect is to advance or inhibit religion, and
• whether it creates an excessive entanglement of government with religion. Lemon, supra.
• We did not, for example, consider that analysis relevant in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783 (1983).
• Nor did we find Lemon useful in Larson v. Valente, 456 U. S. 228 (1982), where there was substantial evidence of overt discrimination against a particular church.
• The Court has invalidated legislation or governmental action on the ground that a secular purpose was lacking, but only when it has concluded there was no question that the statute or activity was motivated wholly by religious considerations.
• The creche in the display depicts the historical origins of this traditional [unnamed] event long recognized as a National Holiday.
• The narrow question is whether there is a secular purpose for Pawtucket's display of the creche.
• The display is sponsored by the city to celebrate the Holiday and to depict the origins of that Holiday. [Why capitalization "Holiday" in place of "holiday"]
• These are legitimate secular purposes.
• The District Court found that the primary effect of including the creche is to confer a substantial and impermissible benefit on religion in general, and on the Christian faith in particular.
• ... to conclude that the primary effect of including the creche is to advance religion in violation of the Establishment Clause would require that we view it as more beneficial to and more an endorsement of religion, for example, than expenditure of large sums of public money for textbooks supplied throughout the country to students attending church-sponsored schools, [does not follow]
• It would also require that we view it as more of an endorsement of religion than the Sunday Closing Laws upheld in McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420 (1961); ....
• We are unable to discern a greater aid to religion deriving from inclusion of the creche than from these benefits and endorsements previously held not violative of the Establishment Clause.
• ... its "reason or effect merely happens to coincide or harmonize with the tenets of some . . . religions." See McGowan, supra, at 366 U. S. 442.
• We are satisfied that the city has a secular purpose for including the creche, that the city has not impermissibly advanced religion, and that including the creche does not create excessive entanglement between religion and government. [all three parts of the Lemon Tests]
• [Part IV: Need for the Clause Has Passed ]
• If the presence of the creche in this display violates the Establishment Clause, a host of other forms of taking official note of Christmas, and of our religious heritage, are equally offensive to the Constitution.
• Any notion that these symbols pose a real danger of establishment of a state church is farfetched indeed.
• [Part V: We are Vigiliant ]
• That this Court has been alert to the constitutionally expressed opposition to the establishment of religion is shown in numerous holdings striking down statutes or programs as violative of the Establishment Clause.
• [Part VI: ]
• We hold that, notwithstanding the religious significance of the creche, the city of Pawtucket has not violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
• Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
• The core of the rationale is available above