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.
Nevertheless, plaintiffs – at least in Establishment cases – tended to reference the fact that they were taxpayers in their complaints against government actions over the next several decades, even if they were also parents of students being impacted. It was rarely the focus on the Court’s decisions, but it kinda kept coming up.
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 might have to operate according to a slightly different set of rules than the rest.
Finally, in 1968, the Court did its best to explain exactly what that might look like, at CONTINUE READING: Flast v. Cohen (1968) – Part Two: That’s Me In The Courtroom | Blue Cereal Education
