Recap of Part One:
The Supreme Court explained in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Mellon (1923) that simply being a taxpayer didn’t give one the right to protest government actions – even potentially unconstitutional ones – in the courts. There were simply too many “what ifs” between the individual taxpayer sending in their $20 and any one specific expenditure.
In the 1960s, the Court began framing the Establishment Clause as something fundamentally different than the other protections in the Bill of Rights. As a result, arguments that this particular clause was being violated were sometimes handled with a different set of rules than other types of claims.
Recap of Part Two:
In Flast v. Cohen (1968), a group of taxpayers objected to the use of public funds to provide secular textbooks for sectarian schools. With any other issue, being taxpayers wouldn’t be sufficient to establish standing. When it came to Establishment Clause issues, however… maybe it kinda was?
The Supreme Court determined that there was nothing in the Constitution barring federal taxpayers from challenging taxing and spending they believed to be unconstitutional when they could demonstrate their fundamental constitutional rights were being violated in the process. In practice, this turned out to apply only when the Establishment Clause was involved. Establishment violations can also occur for non-taxpayers based on “unwanted exposure” to government-promoted religious messages.
The “Lemon Test” informally established in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) set up a three-part checklist for determining whether or not a government action was constitutional: it must have a valid, secular legislative purpose, it’s principal effect can neither inhibit nor advance religion, and it must not create an “excessive government entanglement” CONTINUE READING: Flast v. Cohen (1968) - Part Three: Consider This The Hint Of The Century | Blue Cereal Education
