''Westside Community Board of Education v. Mergens'', 496 U.S. 226 (1990), was a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case involving a school district's ability to hold classes on Bible study after school.

Background

Westside High School, in District 66, located in

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest city ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

, refused to allow a group of students to form a Christian Bible Study Club within their school. Bridget Mergens is the name of the student who initiated the process to start the club. She was a senior at the time. It was decided that the club could not take place because they would not allow a staff member to sponsor it (staff sponsoring was required or the club meetings could not take place at the school). The students argued that the district's decision was in violation of the federal

Equal Access Act The Equal Access Act is a United States federal law passed as Title VIII of the Education for Economic Security Act in 1984 to compel federally funded public secondary schools to provide equal access to extracurricular student clubs. Lobbied for b ...

requiring that groups seeking to express messages containing "religious, political, philosophical, or other content" not be denied the ability to form clubs.

Opinion of the Court

In an 8–1 decision, the Court held that denying equal access to the religious club violated the Equal Access Act, and that treating a religious club equally, including providing a sponsor like other clubs, would not constitute an endorsement of religion prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

. The school's situation was placed under the Equal Access Act because it allowed other ‘limited open forums’. In Part III of Justice O'Connor's opinion, which did not reach a majority of the Court, she applied the

Lemon Test ''Lemon v. Kurtzman'', 403 U.S. 602 (1971), was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States.. The court ruled in an 8–0 decision that Pennsylvania's Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act (represented through David Kurtz ...

to find that the Equal Access Act is constitutional as applied in this case. Justice Kennedy, meanwhile, analyzed the application of the Act under different Court precedents, focusing more upon "coercion".

Dissent

Justice Stevens John Paul Stevens (April 20, 1920 – July 16, 2019) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1975 to 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the second-olde ...

, in a dissenting opinion, would have avoided the Establishment Clause issue.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Westside School District v. Mergens United States Supreme Court cases Establishment Clause case law United States Free Speech Clause case law United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court United States education case law 1990 in United States case law 1990 in religion 1990 in education Education in Omaha, Nebraska

Background

Opinion of the Court

Dissent

See also

References

External links