Georgia Passes Bill to Fund Bible Courses in Public High Schools

All right, I've been coming here a month or two and, from time to time, struggled to keep up with some of you science types, and some of you religious types, when the conversation veered into a technical direction. Finally, I've got a topic square in my field of expertise.The First Amendment states, in part, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...." As the Supreme Court has intepreted this clause since 1947, it means that neither a state nor the federal government may set up a church or pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. More recently, in 1973, the Court articulated a three-part test, called the Lemon test, after the case in which the Court laid it out. Under the Lemon test, governmental action runs afoul of the First Amendment if it has a primary purpose or effect of advancing religion, or if it results in excessive governmental entanglement in religion.It's possible that the legislature included the statement that the law is constitutional in an effort to forestall an argument that their purpose was to advance religion. Such a statement is considered as evidence by a court in any challenge to the statute, but it is not conclusive. Of more value would be a statement of a clear non-secular purpose. The concern of "lawmakers" expressed in the quote from the OP that "children and losing their grasp on one of Western civilization's most influential texts" strongly suggests to me, however, that the real purpose here is to advance a particular religion.The second question is whether the law has an effect of advancing religion. Obviously, generally bible study courses have an effect of advancing religion, that's why churches have them. However, it's conceivable that the state could structure the course in a way, as others have suggested, so that the courses are instructing rather than preaching. However, given that the law by its terms only provides funding for bible studies, it's hard to see how the state can argue that the statute doesn't aid one religion over another.There is also a substantial entanglement issue. There are many different christian denominations. Each of them has different takes on different portions of the bible. Exactly which interpretation will the state present? Or which version of the bible will be used? Certainly it's forseeable that the state could find itself entangled in a number of different religious problems in developing a curriculum.These are a few thoughts that occur to me immediately. If I had to guess, I would guess that this statute will fall. However, Justice Scalia has consistently expressed dissatisfaction with the Lemon test. Justice Thomas is, in the vast majority of cases, a clone of Scalia. I don't know what Chief Justice Roberts's and Jusitice Alito's views are on the Establishment Clause. This case would give them a perfect opportunity to take the Court's analysis in a different direction if they wanted to.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

Posit, that provision may or may not help with the entanglement problem. They still have to deal with the issue of which denomination's take are they going to present. And the school boards apparently will still have to choose which version to use, even if students can opt out and use a different version.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

It bears mentioning that Establishment Clause analysis for post-secondary education is not the same as it is for K-12. The Court generally considers children to be more impresionable than adults and so is less inclined to allow actions that arguably run afoul of the Establishment Clause. Ditto.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

I did forget that inhibiting religion is a no-no (that happens so often), but the part about the secular purpose is there, I just phrased it from the other side. It cannot have a primary purpose of advancing (or inhibiting) religion.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

For the most part, the answer to the problem you raised is that the Lemon test uses the phrase "primary purpose or effect." The First Amendment is not offended by a law with a primary secular purpose that may inhibit religion as a secondary effect.Take for example anti-polygamy laws. Courts uphold those by noting that the primary purpose is secular, to promote the two-parent family as the basic unit of society. (I'd happily and vigorously argue that that is not a necessary or proper purpose for the government to pursue, but that's off topis for this thread.) It is indisputable that, as a secondary effect, they inhibited a tenet, now abandoned, of the Mormon church that promoted polygamy. However, since the Court concluded that that was a secondary effect, the law did not run afoul of the First Amendment.Now, as applied to the OP, if a school were to select the KJV bible as a resource in a course unrelated to religion, the study of Elizabethan England for example, one could argue that it passes Constitutional muster even though, as a secondary effect, it might promote a particular religion. However, since it appears that one of the purposes of this proposed law is to make sure that children are exposed to "one of Western civilization's most influential texts," it certainly appears that both the primary purpose and primary effect is the advancement of religion.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

Gosh, you don't mean to say that the LA Times made a mistake in it's story, do you? How shocking!In my experience, the press does a poor job of covering the law. They usually misunderstand something, or miss the central point completely.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin