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| Stone v. Graham | |
|---|---|
| Name | Stone v. Graham |
| Court | Supreme Court of the United States |
| Citation | 449 U.S. 39 (1980) |
| Decided | June 25, 1980 |
| Majority | Burger |
| Joinmajority | Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens |
| Concurrence | Powell |
| Dissent | Rehnquist |
| Lawsapplied | First Amendment, Establishment Clause, Kentucky Statute |
Stone v. Graham
Stone v. Graham was a United States Supreme Court case decided in 1980 that examined the constitutionality of a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The Court held that the statute violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it lacked a secular legislative purpose. The decision refined the Court's application of the Lemon test and affected subsequent litigation over religious displays in public institutions.
In the 1970s a Kentucky legislature enacted a statute mandating that a copy of the Ten Commandments be displayed in each public classroom in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The statute was part of a sequence of state legislative actions addressing religious texts and symbols, occurring in a period influenced by cases such as Engel v. Vitale, Abington School District v. Schempp, and Lemon v. Kurtzman. Plaintiffs included parents and teachers who challenged enforcement of the statute in federal district court, invoking precedents like Everson v. Board of Education and Epperson v. Arkansas to argue that the statute transgressed the Establishment Clause as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court issued an injunction, and the Commonwealth appealed to the Supreme Court, bringing the matter before Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and an active bench that included Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens, and William H. Rehnquist.
The central legal issue was whether a state statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court analyzed whether the statute satisfied the tripartite test articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman—examining secular purpose, primary effect, and excessive entanglement—and whether the text and historical use of the Ten Commandments carried sufficient secular significance to justify mandatory classroom display. Litigants debated precedents such as Stone v. Graham's contemporaries involving religious instruction, including decisions interpreting the Free Exercise Clause and prior Establishment Clause jurisprudence like School District of Abington Township v. Schempp.
In a per curiam opinion authored by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, the Supreme Court affirmed the injunction, holding that the Kentucky statute violated the Establishment Clause. The Court applied the secular purpose prong of the Lemon v. Kurtzman test and concluded that the statute lacked a predominantly secular legislative purpose because the Ten Commandments are fundamentally religious in nature and the statute did not provide a clearly secular context for their display. The majority therefore found the statute unconstitutional and prohibited enforcement of the classroom posting requirement. Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. wrote a concurring opinion emphasizing nuance in applying Lemon, while Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented, arguing for a different interpretation of Establishment Clause precedents.
The Court's reasoning focused on the absence of a secular legislative purpose. It emphasized that the Ten Commandments are an inherently religious document connected to Moses and Judaism and significant to Christianity, and that the statute required posting the text without any explanatory material or secular context. Citing the Lemon test, the majority explained that the State's endorsement of the Ten Commandments as a religious precept, by mandatory classroom display, signaled an impermissible governmental preference for religion. The opinion surveyed historical cases such as Everson v. Board of Education and Epperson v. Arkansas to situate the decision in the broader trajectory of Establishment Clause doctrine. The concurrence by Justice Powell urged careful application of Lemon's prongs and noted potential distinctions where historical or cultural displays might pass constitutional muster, referencing decisions like Marsh v. Chambers where legislative prayer traditions received deference. Justice Rehnquist's dissent criticized the majority for discounting the possible secular uses of the Ten Commandments as moral instruction and for restraining longstanding practices he viewed as culturally rooted.
Stone v. Graham contributed to a body of Supreme Court jurisprudence limiting explicit religious instruction and compelled religious displays in public schools. The decision has been cited in subsequent cases addressing religious symbols and texts, including litigation over displays of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and public spaces that invoked Van Orden v. Perry and McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky in later decades. Stone underscored the vitality of the Lemon test in Establishment Clause analysis during the 1980s and informed debates among scholars, litigators, and state legislatures attempting to craft accommodations that might withstand judicial review. The ruling influenced advocacy by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty as they litigated competing claims about religious expression and governmental neutrality. The case remains a touchstone in constitutional law courses and is frequently discussed in relation to the evolving interpretation of the Establishment Clause by the Supreme Court.