Talk:Lemon v. Kurtzman

Question

After Dover judgement,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

has Lemon been re-affirmed? AV, December 22, 2005.

Your question misses the point. District courts are not in the position to "affirm" or "disaffirm" Supreme Court precedent. Kitzmiller is a trial judgment that was not appealed. The Supreme Court itself has not made any explicit decisions regarding Lemon, but in its most recent establishment clause cases, the Court has not used its own three-part test. Off-the-record comments by Chief Justice Roberts and other suggest distate for Lemon. As a result, its status is unclear. Given this lack of clarity, district courts deciding challenges under the establishment clause now have a choice of following Lemon, or any of other tests, or some eclectic concatenation thereof. Judge Jones chose to follow Lemon. For other district courts, it is still "choose, and choose at your own risk" as much now as before Kitzmiller. Non Curat Lex (talk) 22:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I Auto-Cited 403 U.S. 602, and received a result of "Q" which, I think, means that the case has been questioned or criticized by other courts, but not definitively overruled by the Supreme Court. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 22:50, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that "citators" remarks can mean a lot of things. A case that is "perfectly good law" can get a "Q" if a later court merely distinguishes its application, or mentions it. Another case could have a "Q" and have zero weight left at all. Lemon is in that category because it has never been expressly overruled. Lemon is somewhere in between. Its status is very uncertain and that uncertainty is very important right now. Non Curat Lex (talk) 02:46, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Later developments

I think that the first few sentences of this section are fairly slanted, and since the "citation needed" tags have been there for at least six months, perhaps it should be changed. 98.177.243.123 (talk) 01:39, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

-- Agreed. I stumbled across this article looking for informtion, and this doesn't sound NPOV to me. I imagine that whomever wrote the bit about "Lemon in question" is referring to Scalia & Thomas' dissents in Epperson (since they referenced the 1980s). But a) Dissents aren't legally binding precedent, and nothing (that I recall) that has come since has brought the continued use of Lemon test into question. I'd like to read the law journal that backs up this opinion, but as it's been sitting here and hasn't been given evidence, I think it ought to be reverted, until such evidence is brought to light. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.56.193.182 (talk) 03:12, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

There are many law journal articles that back up this opinion, and the courts own rulings have applied different tests than the lemon test instead of using it:

• SYMPOSIUM: RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER LEE V. WEISMAN: Lemon is Dead. "Lemon, of course, was the case that announced the much-maligned three-part 'Lemon test' for assessing a statute's constitutionality under the Establishment Clause. 3" (fee required to access) Case Western Reserve Law Review.
• DOES THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE PASS THE LEMON TEST? "The Court has "repeatedly emphasized [its] unwillingness to be confined to any single test or criterion in this sensitive area."54" Duke Law Review
• RELIGION AND THE BURDEN OF PROOF: POSNER’S ECONOMICS AND PRAGMATISM IN METZL V. LEININGER (PDF) "The Lemon test inspired so many criticisms that one author announced, “Lemon is Dead.”39" Harvard Law Review.

And these are just in the first few google hits - the criticisms are ubiquitous, although I agree that they should be sourced and cleaned up. To clam that there is no such criticism is uninformed. --Trödel 15:46, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Statement of Regret

Decided to add a new section in case the anonymous user who contributed this decides to contest my edit or simply curious why it was made. He seems reasonably active, though new, and nothing in his history suggests depriving him of an assumption of good faith.

I removed a claim (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lemon_v._Kurtzman&oldid=540202263) that Chief Justice Burger regretted the broad application of the Lemon Test subsequent to this ruling. While I can certainly believe he might have said such a thing, it is a paraphrased interpretation from a private dinner party supposed to have been attended by Burger and conservative activist Andrew Schafly, recalled 16 years after the event and long after the Chief Justice died. The dead man cannot defend himself, and there are no sources proffered except this one man who is demonstrably hostile to the Lemon Test.

Furthermore, it was technically incorrect to cite Conservapedia itself, which is a freely editable wiki and has an admitted/substantiated bias. If it had valid sources to cite, then those should be cited instead. See the policy WP:Verifiability. Even citing Wikipedia itself is not allowed. The policy allows questionable/self-published sources if the source is commenting on him/herself, as Schafly is doing here for the dinner party he attended, but it's not allowed to "involve claims about third parties". Accordingly, I removed the claim per policy. I tried to salvage some version of the claim by researching it myself, but couldn't find anyone else talking about it. Jaeran (talk) 13:38, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Ruling

I noticed that in the article it isn't really clear as to how the judges ruled. For the record perhaps we should amend the article to say

"Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971),[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 8-0 that Pennsylvania's 1968 Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education . . ." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.83.128.86 (talk) 04:18, 28 March 2014‎ (UTC)

I agree that this is useful/important information. - - MrBill3 (talk) 23:18, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

The information has beed added and the name of the statute was corrected. --P3Y229 (talk • contribs) 22:30, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I wrote an article on the lead plaintiff Alton Lemon. In doing so I noticed there are probably some high quality sources that would provide scholarly analysis and commentary on this case, they could be used to improve this article. I didn't use them in the article on Alton Lemon as it is about the person, but they popped up in my research (not hard to find). - - MrBill3 (talk) 03:01, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Kennedy v. Bremerton School District

Did this case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District explicitly overruled Lemon v. Kurtzman? SoupI (talk) 15:37, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Kennedy repudiated the Lemon Test but did not overrule Lemon v. Kurtzman. The Lemon decision was about various forms of public assistance to private schools, including religious schools. This was not at issue in Kennedy, so it could overrule Lemon. With the Lemon Test gone, I have no doubt that a case involving facts similar to those of Lemon will work its way to the Supreme Court. That's when Lemon v. Kurtzman could be overruled. SMP0328. (talk) 05:47, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Page 27 of the Majority Opinion: "What the District and the Ninth Circuit overlooked, however, is that the “shortcomings” associated with this “ambitiou[s],” abstract, and ahistorical approach to the Establishment Clause became so “apparent” that this Court long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot"

Page 28: "In place of Lemon and the endorsement test, this Court has instructed that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’"

The dissent (page 2) recognized it as well: "The Court overrules Lemon v. Kurtzman...and calls into question decades of subsequent precedents that it deems “offshoot[s]” of that decision" Costatitanica (talk) 21:29, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Didn’t Carson v. Makin overrule Lemon v Kurtzman? 173.218.150.39 (talk) 18:22, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

No. Lemon was an establishment clause case. Carson was a free exercise case. Kennedy was a bit of both, and Gorsuch took the opportunity to finally bury Lemon. Costatitanica (talk) 16:35, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

factors

Is the list of "Factors" subsidiary to the "Entanglement Prong", or parallel to the three prongs, or what? If they are relevant to two or three prongs, they should be a clearly independent list. —Tamfang (talk) 17:20, 2 February 2023 (UTC)