Since the birth of our nation, we have been provided with amendments set in place to protect our freedoms. This set of amendments is known as the bill of rights, and they serve as a guideline for laws so we can determine if they are just or unjust. Since most of the constitution and bill of rights is up to interpretation, there end up being quite a few discrepancies over what the text of these documents actually mean. Because of this we have a Supreme Court that is there to play referee and make the decision over which side is right. In the case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, the plaintiff has claimed that the states of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island have been violating the first amendment’s establishment clause by giving public funds away to church-related
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At the time, most of nonpublic schools were Roman Catholic affiliated and the act ended up reimbursing these schools for their not only their textbooks but their teacher salaries as well. Only a year later in 1969 Rhode Island passed a similar act called the Salary Supplement Act which basically paid 15% of the private school’s teacher salaries. (cite) This was not the first instance that a case had been submitted to the Supreme Court about these statutes but after multiple denials, Lemon v. Kurtzman finally made it to the docket …show more content…
Kurtzman’s argument was that the states were not funding religious practices and that the state was only giving money to help education. He contested that in no way did the acts support religious practice because of the provisions in each statute that specifically said the purchased textbooks had to be secular as well as the teachers that received supplements had to be teaching secular subjects such as math or English.(cite)
My opinion of the case is that the framers of the U.S. Constitution explicitly state that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there-of” (cite) so therefore it is completely unconstitutional for these two states to pass laws that are obviously trying to advance the religious school system. I also believe that even though the states placed provisions in the statutes to attempt to make them seem secular based they still crossed the line of entanglement by getting too involved in the supplements and purchasing of textbooks from these
At the time, most of nonpublic schools were Roman Catholic affiliated and the act ended up reimbursing these schools for their not only their textbooks but their teacher salaries as well. Only a year later in 1969 Rhode Island passed a similar act called the Salary Supplement Act which basically paid 15% of the private school’s teacher salaries. (cite) This was not the first instance that a case had been submitted to the Supreme Court about these statutes but after multiple denials, Lemon v. Kurtzman finally made it to the docket …show more content…
Kurtzman’s argument was that the states were not funding religious practices and that the state was only giving money to help education. He contested that in no way did the acts support religious practice because of the provisions in each statute that specifically said the purchased textbooks had to be secular as well as the teachers that received supplements had to be teaching secular subjects such as math or English.(cite)
My opinion of the case is that the framers of the U.S. Constitution explicitly state that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there-of” (cite) so therefore it is completely unconstitutional for these two states to pass laws that are obviously trying to advance the religious school system. I also believe that even though the states placed provisions in the statutes to attempt to make them seem secular based they still crossed the line of entanglement by getting too involved in the supplements and purchasing of textbooks from these