Sloan v. Lemon

Sloan v. Lemon (1973) was the last of three related church-state cases that the U.S. Supreme Court considered between 1971 and 1973. At issue in Sloan was whether the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could reimburse parents for the tuition that they paid to send their children to religiously affiliated nonpublic schools. Based on its earlier judgment in Lemon v. Kurtzman (Lemon I) in 1971, in Sloan, the Court held that the statute permitting reimbursement was unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it impermissibly advanced religion. Knowledge of the facts in Lemon I is essential in understanding the Court's subsequent decision in Sloan.

In Lemon I, the Supreme Court first articulated its now-famous Lemon test, a three-pronged standard for use by the courts in adjudicating cases involving the issue of church-state separation. Under the Lemon test, a law or policy must have a secular purpose, must neither advance nor inhibit religion (i.e., it must be neutral), and must not foster excessive government entanglement with religion.

In Lemon I, the Court considered whether laws from Rhode Island and Pennsylvania authorizing state aid to nonpublic schools were constitutional. Both laws focused on improving secular education within nonpublic, primarily church-related elementary and secondary schools. The Rhode Island law provided state supplements for salaries of those teaching secular courses, while the Pennsylvania statute authorized state funding for various secular instructional costs. The Court declared both laws unconstitutional on the basis that they fostered excessive entanglement between government and religion because of the state bureaucracy that would have been necessary to ensure that public funds were used only to support secular instruction. Lemon I invalidated a number of contracts between religious schools and state governments that had been consummated in good faith prior to the final ruling.

Two years later, in Lemon v. Kurtzman II (1973) (Lemon II), the Supreme Court permitted the government to reimburse church-related schools for costs of secular instruction incurred prior to invalidation of the two state laws. The Court reached this outcome because it was satisfied that the plaintiffs had not sought interim injunctive relief, the related services had already been provided, denial of payment would have had serious financial consequences on private schools that relied on the state's formal agreement, and there was no possibility of continuing entanglement, because the contractual relationship legally could not continue beyond the final payments that the Court authorized for the 1970–1971 school year.

The Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Lemon I on June 28, 1971. On August 27, 1971, the Pennsylvania General Assembly, seeking to avoid the entanglement issue that doomed its previous aid statute, passed a new law authorizing direct reimbursements to parents for tuition expenses incurred in sending their children to sectarian and other nonpublic schools. The new statute specifically precluded any governmental control over policy determination, personnel, curriculum, or any other administrative function in the non-public schools. Further, the law imposed no restrictions or limitations on how the reimbursements could be used by qualifying parents. The intent, of course, was to distance public authority and oversight as far as possible from the operation of religious and other nonpublic schools. Clearly, the General Assembly's intent was to disentangle church and state in accordance with the third prong mandate in the Lemon test. The plaintiffs challenged the new law immediately.

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