Indiana Law Review
Volume 51 2018 Number 2

ARTICLES

FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR: HOW THE SUPREME
COURT’S ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE CASES

FUEL RELIGIOUS CONFLICT

JOHN M. BICKERS*

“Rustic shepherds, worthless reproaches, mere stomachs, we know
how to say many lies like the truth, and, whenever we wish, we
know how to tell the truth.”1

I. INTRODUCTION: THE MUSES AND TRUTH

The ancient Greek author Hesiod received his inspiration to write a history
of the Olympian Gods from the Muses. They began by telling him they could tell
him the truth, but they also knew how to tell him lies. They lied when they
thought it was necessary to accomplish what they had decided was a greater good.

Like the Muses, the Justices of the Supreme Court are nine in number. Like
the Muses, the justices can tell false things as well as true ones. In the messy area
of government-religious speech, the Supreme Court’s opinions sometimes contain
facts that seem plausible but are false. They are “lies like the truth.”2 The Court
seems to offer these facts without malice, in an attempt to find a neutral solution
to a problem that is incapable of having such an answer. The Court seeks to find
a way to reduce the potential ferocity of religious tension in our society, but such
attempts have ironically resulted only in an increase in conflict due to the
inevitable nature of advocacy within a constitutional system.

This paper will propose that the very attempt to resolve religious disputes by
presenting false facts accelerates and intensifies conflict. Ideologically opposing
forces seize each offered settlement from the Court as a tool to advance their own
goal: either the increase or elimination of government-religious speech. In failing
to accept that religious conflict is inevitable in a free society, the Court‘s

* Professor of Law, Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University. My

thanks to Kelsey Braido and Carol Furnish, who provided invaluable research assistance; Samuel

J. Levine and Christopher Lund, for their very helpful comments on a late version of the Article;

and my colleagues at the Central States Law School Association, who sat through an earlier version

and helped me to reorient it. Errors are of course my own.

1. Hesiod, Theogony, ll. 26-28 (Wm. Blake Tyrrell trans., 1997), available at https://msu.

edu/~tyrrell/theogon.pdf [https://perma.cc/V4B3-LU5H].

2. Id.

http://doi.org/10.18060/4806.1190



306 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

promulgation of false facts merely exacerbates that conflict. Only through a frank
recognition of the problem and a deliberate redrawing of boundaries for the
Establishment Clause can the Court offer some of the peace its decisions have so
far sought in vain. 

Part II of this Article will demonstrate the nature of the war over the
boundary between government and religion. To show the contours of the
battlefield, this part begins by offering a quick review of the many tests offered
by the Court and its various members for resolving challenges to government-
religious speech. Some of these tests, taken seriously, would eliminate a great
deal of our public history in ways that much of the nation would likely not
tolerate. The remaining tests, while protective of tradition, would allow for a
militant sectarianism that much of the country would find equally intolerable.
Thus, the court alternates among the tests, presents vague escape hatches from the
tests’ obvious meanings, or simply offers facts that do not parallel the actual
behavior of the participants in the case. This part will then examine some possible
reasons for the multiplicity of malleability of these tests, including a retreat from
objective virtue, a desire to limit social disorder, and the wish to protect the
Court’s own institutional role. This part concludes with a brief introduction to the
primary combatants in the war: those who seek to increase dramatically the voice
of the government in religious matters and those who seek to curtail significantly
government expression that speaks to matters of faith. 

Part III will open by considering some of the most prominent cases, which
have deployed false facts. It will focus on cases involving either monuments or
legislative prayer, as it is in these areas that the Muses’ technique of telling
falsehoods for the benefit of humans has been most prominent. This part will then
expound upon a dangerous byproduct of the breakdown of a workable
Establishment Clause: the inability to police the border between politics and
religion. Untrammeled majority rule in government-religious pronouncements has
had deleterious effects on American minorities through our history and into this
new century. A quick survey of some of these events, concluding with the
attempts in 2017 to impose limits on travel that were arguably based on religion,
will illustrate the dangers of the status quo. This part will conclude with
illustrations of the combatants clearly using the Muses’ idea and deploying false
facts to either increase or decrease the government’s ability to speak on matters
of faith. The Court’s mythical narratives are transformed into weapons to
continue the war, something far from the Court’s seeming goal of reducing
religious-based tension in the body politic. 

Part IV will turn to a real solution, albeit one that causes understandable
discomfort for scholars and judges alike. This paper proposes that only
incorporating an admittedly artificial distinction, based on time, into standing
doctrine offers any real hope of establishing peace concerning the proper place
of religion in the public life of the United States. Justice Breyer offered such a
possible solution in the Ten Commandments cases of 2005. Although the
Supreme Court has not yet embraced such an answer, some lower courts seem to
have used such an approach in resolving cases before them. This Article
concludes by taking the position that Justice Breyer’s careful, fact-based
treatment of government-religious speech cases should be converted into an overt



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 307

rule of standing. In short, an objector would have standing to challenge any new
government religious speech, but not old religious speech. Such a rule, artificial
as it may seem, offers the best hope of bringing peace to an area of fierce, and
perhaps dangerous, contention in our legal system.

II. THE RELIGIOUS CONFLICT

A. The Field of Battle: The Troublesome Tests

Eschewing the usual lament about the chaos of this area of constitutional
law,3 it is nonetheless worth quickly reviewing a handful of the most frequently
used tests that might be applicable in evaluating religious speech by the
government. It is apparent that in many areas of Establishment Clause
jurisprudence, relative stability exists because the Court has settled on a
framework for that particular area.4 In assessing religious speech by the
government, though, the multiplicity of tests5 means that a justice or group of
justices may choose which test to deploy on any given occasion. This is an

3. See, e.g., RonNell Andersen Jones, Pick Your Poison: Private Speech, Government

Speech, and the Special Problem of Religious Displays, 2010 BYU L. REV. 2045, 2045 (2010)

(noting a “deeply divided and often inconsistent Court has created significant complexity in this

area”); Steven G. Gey, Reconciling the Supreme Court’s Four Establishment Clauses, 8 U. PA. J.

CONST. L. 725, 725 (2006) (“[T]he Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence is a

mess—both hopelessly confused and deeply contradictory.”); Michael I. Meyerson, The Original

Meaning of “God”: Using the Language of the Framing Generation to Create a Coherent

Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, 98 MARQ. L. REV. 1035, 1037 (2015) (“The Supreme Court

has never figured out how to evaluate the constitutionality of the myriad religious references that

pervade American public life. The Court seemingly alternates between ad hoc, one-case-at-a-time

jurisprudence and prudential avoidance of the constitutional issue altogether.”); Jay A. Sekulow

& Francis J. Manion, The Supreme Court and the Ten Commandments: Compounding the

Establishment Clause Confusion, 14 WM. & MARY BILL RTS. J. 33, 33 (2005) (noting that the Ten

Commandments decisions “have done nothing to clear away the fog obscuring religious display

cases or Establishment Clause jurisprudence generally”).

4. For example, access by religious groups to public space is judged along the lines

developed in free speech law for designated public fora. See, e.g., Good News Club v. Milford

Cent. Sch., 533 U.S. 98 (2001); Lamb’s Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 508 U.S.

384 (1993). Likewise, public funding for religious education is analyzed as a question of true

private choice. See Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002). The multiplicity of tests in

these areas gives rise to the appearance that the law is in chaos. That is not necessarily so, and the

diversity of analysis merely shows that the Court has subdivided the Establishment Clause into a

number of discrete types of problems. 

5. Indeed, Professor Meyerson has warned that examining the earliest cases may not help

us reduce the number of tests to one in this area. Meyerson, supra note 3, at 1053 (noting “even the

most rudimentary form of case synthesis in the area of governmental religious expression is

impossible”).



308 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

inherently messy and inexact process.6 
1. Lemon.—Almost a quarter-century after Everson’s proclamation that the

Establishment Clause means “at least this,”7 Chief Justice Burger endeavored to
syncretize the cases that had followed. His attempt to do so in Lemon v. Kurzman8

famously married an inquiry into the purpose of the government action, an
examination into the action’s principal effect, and a warning to avoid
entanglement of religion and government that was “excessive.”9 

There was likely hope that the Lemon formation would serve as a Grand
Unified Theory of the Establishment Clause,10 but that was not to be. Indeed,
Chief Justice Burger himself authored a major opinion on the Establishment
Clause a dozen years later, Marsh v. Chambers,11 in which he mentioned that the
Court of Appeals had applied Lemon,12 but he otherwise ignored it.13 

6. See Kent Greenawalt, Fundamental Questions About the Religion Clauses: Reflections

on Some Critiques, 47 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 1131, 1144 (2010) (suggesting that there are times when

decision-making requires us to “rely on our intuitive judgments - judgments influenced by our

cultural heritage, particular upbringing, and professional training”); see also Nelson Tebbe,

Religion and Social Coherentism, 91 NOT RE DAME L. REV. 363 (2015) (offering a thoughtful

defense of a quest for coherence as motivating judges, not mere ad hoc preferences).

7. Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 15-16 (1947) (“The ‘establishment of religion’

clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can

set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one

religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from

church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can

be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or

non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious

activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach

or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate

in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the

clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between

Church and State.’”).

8. 403 U.S. 602 (1971).

9. “Three such tests may be gleaned from our cases. First, the statute must have a secular

legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor

inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with

religion.’” Id. at 612-13 (citations omitted).

10. Bd. of Educ. of Kiryas Joel Vill. Sch. Dist. v. Grumet, 512 U.S. 687, 718 (1994)

(O’Connor, J., concurring).

11. 463 U.S. 783 (1983). 

12. Id. at 786.

13. The Court upheld the practice of legislative prayer. The reason for ignoring Lemon is

probably best illustrated by the dissent, which, like the Court of Appeals, would meticulously apply

Lemon to strike down the practice. Id. at 796 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (“In sum, I have no doubt

that, if any group of law students were asked to apply the principles of Lemon to the question of

legislative prayer, they would nearly unanimously find the practice to be unconstitutional.”) Id. at

800-01.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 309

That pattern continued. Sometimes the Court used Lemon,14 and sometimes
it did not.15 When Lemon was absent, sometimes it was specifically rejected,16 but
other times, as in Marsh v. Chambers, it was simply ignored.17 While perhaps not
quite a B-movie monster,18 it is difficult to avoid the sense that Lemon’s use is
contrived. When used in the context of government speech, Lemon’s purpose
prong presents particular difficulties, as will appear throughout the rest of this
Article.

2. Coercion.—The on-again, off-again use of Lemon allowed other justices
to offer their own paradigms for applying the Establishment Clause in areas of
government speech. One view destined to receive seeming unanimous support is
a prohibition on coercion; surely, preventing the government from requiring
people to profess a religious belief is close to the core meaning of the
Establishment Clause.19 

The difficulty has come in defining what government action can fairly be
labeled coercion. Some justices have found the psychosocial pressure of a non-
denominational benediction opening a middle-school graduation20 or a
loudspeaker prayer before a football game coercive.21 Other justices, while
acknowledging that coercion is an evil prohibited by the Constitution, would have
approved of those forms of government speech,22 as well as the use of a church

14. See, e.g., Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 583-85 (1987); Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S.

39, 40-41 (1980).

15. See, e.g., Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 679 (1984) (“[W]e have repeatedly

emphasized our unwillingness to be confined to any single test or criterion in this sensitive area.”).

16. See, e.g., Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 686 (2005) (Rehnquist, C.J., plurality

opinion); Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 587 (1992).

17. 463 U.S. 783 (1983); see also Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002).

18. Among the many critical comments on Lemon by justices and scholars, none have earned

the well-earned fame of Justice Scalia’s caustic observation in a case involving a church seeking

after-school access to school property: 

Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and

shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our

Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and

school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District . . . . The secret of the

Lemon test’s survival, I think, is that it is so easy to kill. It is there to scare us (and our

audience) when we wish it to do so, but we can command it to return to the tomb at will.

Lamb’s Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384, 398-99 (1993) (Scalia, J.,

concurring).

19. W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943) (“If there is any fixed

star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall

be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess

by word or act their faith therein.”).

20. Lee, 505 U.S. at 592-93.

21. Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 311-12 (2000). 

22. See, e.g., Lee, 505 U.S. at 640 (Scalia, J. dissenting) (“The coercion that was a hallmark

of historical establishments of religion was coercion of religious orthodoxy and of financial support



310 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

as the setting for a public high-school graduation.23 In the area of government-
religious speech, a reliance on coercion alone would essentially read the
Establishment Clause out of the Constitution: any observer could avert her eyes
from a statue declaring a particular faith as the correct faith.

3. Endorsement.—There was never a perfect fit between the Lemon test,
designed in the context of school-funding cases, and religious speech by the
government. Any such speech, display, or permanent monument was in danger
of being tripped up by Lemon’s purpose-prong. Possibly reluctant to bear
responsibility for a judicial-iconoclasm movement, the justices famously watered-
down Lemon by recognizing a proper secular purpose when they saw reindeer.24

Justice O’Connor, clearly troubled by that approach, offered an alternative rubric
for thinking about the Establishment Clause. When it came to government
speech, she suggested the real evil was the use of the government’s bully pulpit
to endorse one faith or sect over others. As she memorably phrased it, the evil the
Establishment Clause was meant to prevent was “making adherence to a religion
relevant in any way to a person’s standing in the political community.”25

This test, and the idea that the government must not deliver “a message to
nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community,
and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored
members of the political community[,]”26 was quite popular in academic circles.27

Although it commanded a majority of the Court on a few occasions as the

by force of law and threat of penalty.”) (emphasis in original).

23. See Elmbrook Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 134 S. Ct. 2283, 2283-84 (2014) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

24. For much of the twentieth century, an annual appearance in communities throughout the

United States was the arrival on the lawn of the courthouse or city hall of a crèche, or nativity

scene. The gathering of figures about a manger depicted the Christian story of the miraculous birth

of Jesus Christ. When the Court first grappled with a challenge to such a display, it found that the

display survived a challenge under Lemon because the purpose of celebrating Christmas was a

secular one, demonstrated by the fact that the crèche was accompanied by figures of reindeer, a

clown, an elephant, a teddy bear, see Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 671 (1984), and—although

it did not make its way into the Supreme Court opinion at the time—a robot. See Donnelly v.

Lynch, 525 F. Supp. 1150, 1155 (D. R.I. 1981). Counsel for communities across the country

thereafter presumably explained to their clients that nativities could remain, provided they were

“secularized” with the inclusion of non-religious symbols of the Christmas holiday. 

25. Lynch, 465 U.S. at 687 (O’Connor, J., concurring).

26. Id. at 688.

27. See, e.g., Alan Brownstein, A Decent Respect for Religious Liberty and Religious

Equality: Justice O’Connor’s Interpretation of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, 32

MCGEORGE L. REV. 837, 838 (2001); Arnold H. Loewy, Rethinking Government Neutrality

Towards Religion Under the Establishment Clause: The Untapped Potential of Justice O’Connor’s

Insight, 64 N.C. L. REV. 1049, 1049-51 (1986); Jay Wexler, Government Disapproval of Religion,

2013 BYU L. REV. 119, 124 (2013). Of course, the test also has its detractors. See, e.g., Michael

W. McConnell, Religious Freedom at a Crossroads, 59 U. CHI. L. REV. 115, 148 (1992); Stephen

D. Smith, Symbols, Perceptions, and Doctrinal Illusions: Establishment Neutrality and the “No

Endorsement” Test, 86 MICH. L. REV. 266, 267 (1987).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 311

complete, or at least partial, reason for a decision,28 it also engendered a persistent
line of objection.29 Nonetheless, it has never been formally repudiated, and so
remains, like Lemon and coercion, an available rubric for government-speech
cases.

4. History.—As noted earlier, even the author of Lemon was uncommitted to
it as a universal test.30 In the most prominent government-religious-speech case
he authored after Lemon, Chief Justice Burger did not use it.31 Instead, in
evaluating the practice of opening a state-legislative session with a prayer, he
turned to the nation’s history.32 He noted the first Congress to operate under the
Constitution, the very group of men who passed what was to become the First
Amendment, had hired a chaplain and inaugurated their sessions with a prayer.33

Although noting that a long course of practice did not necessarily preclude a
finding of unconstitutionality, he observed that this tradition was so ingrained that
the Establishment Clause could not plausibly be applied to forbid it.34

But as with the other tests, this one has a series of built-in difficulties. First,
of course, is the variant that is always present when seeking a historical pattern:
deciding what counts toward the pattern. Does one give the more weight to the
thanksgiving declarations of Presidents Washington and Adams, or President
Jefferson’s unwillingness to make such a declaration?35

Possibly worse, the consequences of using a true historical test might well be
sectarian in a way that would be deeply divisive in modern America. Justice
Stevens noted, in an exchange with Justice Scalia during the Ten Commandments
cases, that a substantial part of the founding generation was only willing to extend
religious protection to Christianity.36 Not everyone in the colonies was a
Christian, of course, and President Washington’s letter to the Jewish community
of Newport, Rhode Island, remains a classic part of Washington’s understanding

28. See, e.g., Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 309-10, 314 (2000) (in an

opinion overtly using the Lemon test, the Court nevertheless notes that “sponsorship of a religious

message is impermissible because it sends the ancillary message to members of the audience who

are nonadherents ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an

accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political

community.’”) (quoting Lynch, 465 U.S. at 688).

29. See, e.g., Justice Scalia’s desire for an Establishment Clause jurisprudence that had at its

center the idea that “there is nothing unconstitutional in a State’s favoring religion generally,

honoring God through public prayer and acknowledgment, or, in a nonproselytizing manner,

venerating the Ten Commandments.” Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 692 (2005) (Scalia, J.,

concurring).

30. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).

31. Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983).

32. Id. at 786-90.

33. Id. at 787-88.

34. Id. at 790-91.

35. Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 686-87 (2005); id. at 724 (Stevens, J., dissenting).

36. Id. at 726 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“[M]any of the Framers understood the word ‘religion’

in the Establishment Clause to encompass only the various sects of Christianity.”).



312 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

of the Establishment Clause.3 7 Yet it is also true that when different religions
were discussed in our formative period, speakers typically meant different sects
of Christianity.38 In twenty-first century America, with far greater religious
diversity and an increasing number of non-religious people,39 such an approach
would offer little more than one faith’s conquest of the government.

Finally, Chief Justice Burger’s critical admission from Marsh makes the
historical approach even less of a test than most of its competitors. For once a
judge concedes that “historical patterns cannot justify contemporary violations
of constitutional guarantees,”40 the history test has lost its power as a constraint
upon judicial decision-making. Indeed, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion
that history cannot resolve all matters of constitutionality when one considers that
the single most fundamental case in constitutional canon relies upon the fact the
Court found the First Congress misunderstood the meaning of Article III of the
Constitution.41 If the First Congress could get that wrong, why should they be
infallible on everything else?

5. Monotheism.—One more possible test appeared in Justice Scalia’s dissent
in Kentucky’s portion of the Ten Commandments cases. Claiming that the
Framers were always willing to allow endorsement of monotheism,42 Justice
Scalia went so far as to suggest that government might freely ignore large
sections of the country’s religious population: “With respect to public
acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation’s

37. Responding to a letter expressing their “affection and esteem” for the president, but also

noting that some governments had deprived them “of the invaluable rights of free Citizens,”

President Washington noted that the new government of the United States “gives to bigotry no

sanction,” and only required that people living in the nation “demean themselves as good citizens.”

Letter from George Washington, to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island (August

18, 1790), available at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135

[https://perma.cc/PK5D-76YR].

38. Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 727 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (citing Justice Story for the

proposition that the purpose of the Establishment clause was not to protect Judaism or Islam, but

to prevent competition among Christian denominations).

39. Dallan F. Flake, Image Is Everything: Corporate Branding and Religious Accommodation

in the Workplace, 163 U. PA. L. REV. 699, 704 (2015) (“While Americans remain overwhelmingly

Christian (78.4%), non-Christian religions continue to grow, with Buddhists, Muslims, Baha’is, and

others immigrating to the United States in greater numbers.”). Professor Flake also observes that

“the most remarkable trend” is the growth in the number of Americans who do not identify with

a particular faith. Id. at 703-04 (“[O]ne-third of adults under age thirty are religiously unaffiliated

today--the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.”); see also Nicholas C.

Roberts, The Rising None: Marsh, Galloway, and the End of Legislative Prayer, 90 IND. L.J. 407,

436 (2015) (“In a 2013 survey, 20% of respondents indicated that they had no religious preference.

Only 8% reported no religious preference in 1990.”).

40. Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 790 (1983).

41. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).

42. McCreary Cty. v. Am. Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 893-94 (2005) (Scalia,

J., dissenting).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 313

historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of
polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard
of devout atheists.”43

This idea has not appeared again in a Supreme Court opinion in the years
since its offering. As the next section will demonstrate, the notion that
government may disregard atheism and other faiths is a guiding principle for
some combatants in the struggle over the Establishment Clause, regardless of
what the founding generation or other giants of American history may have
thought.44 

B. Why Are There So Many Inconsistent Tests?

One abiding mystery is why the Court would spend so long trying to decide
what the appropriate test ought to be. There are countless areas where the Court
has changed tests,45 changed the meaning of the words in the test,46 or otherwise
altered the meaning of the tests.47 The Establishment Clause, with multiple tests
deployable at will, represents a different phenomenon. Before examining the
consequences of this phenomenon, it is worth a little speculation as to why the
Court struggles to decide the proper test. 

Professor Ledewitz has recently posited that the Supreme Court has simply
given up any project of proclaiming constitutional values and is instead following
a nihilistic path.48 Under his theory, the Court has simply forfeited any role as a
moral guardian for the state.49 Among the cases he cites for this

43. Id. at 893.

44. See infra Part II.D. As to the Founding Fathers, it should not pass unnoticed that the

author of the Declaration of Independence may be thought of as one of Justice Scalia’s freely-

disregarded believers in an unconcerned deity. See Steven K. Green, Understanding the “Christian

Nation” Myth, 2010 CARDOZO L. REV. DE NOVO 245, 257 (2010) (“Most deists, like many of the

Founders--Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson--denied the divinity of Jesus,

of his substitutional atonement, and the reality of biblical miracles.”). 

45. See, e.g., Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954) (“[I]n the field of public

education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”).

46. See, e.g., Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 872-73 (1992)

(O’Connor, Kennedy & Souter, JJ., announcing that Roe v. Wade was affirmed while nonetheless

reversing “the trimester framework, which we do not consider to be part of the essential holding

of Roe”).

47. Compare Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 58 (1905) (striking down hourly limits on

bakery workers because there was “no reasonable foundation for holding this to be necessary or

appropriate as a health law”) (emphasis added), with W. Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379,

391 (1937) (upholding a minimum wage for women because “regulation which is reasonable in

relation to its subject and is adopted in the interests of the community is due process”) (emphasis

added).

48. Bruce Ledewitz, The Five Days in June when Values Died in American Law, 49 AKRON

L. REV. 115, 116 (2016).

49. Id. at 116-17. 



314 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

proposition—indeed, the opening salvo of the “five-day war on values” he
identifies—was the Establishment Clause case that exemplified the conflict over
the meaning of coercion, Lee v. Weisman.50 Professor Ledewitz notes that the
Court not only held that an eighth-grade graduation was coercive because it was
so important to the students,51 but also equated morality with religion, which
made the promulgation of virtue forbidden by the Establishment Clause.52

In Professor Ledewitz’s view, the Court once saw itself as a guarantor of the
civic virtues necessary for the success of the American Republican experiment.53

The Court’s repudiation of this role in favor of that of a neutral umpire, he argues,
means cession of the authority to use values in its decisions.54 Content to limit its
role to calling balls and strikes,55 the Court is now unwilling, or even unable, to
call the parties to a dispute to a shared understanding of our values.56

This understanding of modern American law is profound, if a little
depressing. It is possible, though, that the Court’s rejection of values, at least in
Establishment Clause cases, is merely a usefully worn mask. After all, the hymn
to neutrality contained in Everson57 predates the values-based approach of Brown
v. Board of Education by almost a decade. As will be noted later, values-language
is present on all sides in government-religious-speech cases: the value asserted
merely changes with the position the justice is defending.

Another possible reason is perhaps even more cynical—it could be that the
use of different tests is nothing more than a cloak for religious or political
preference. It is certainly possible to derive such a dark meaning from individual
comments by the Justices in opinion or argument, and the whole of the
“monotheism” test, although admittedly only a minority view, is difficult to
square with anything other than mere religious or political preference.58 Yet it is
also true that the great majority of cases, in the Supreme Court and elsewhere,
appear to be good-faith attempts to solve the Establishment Clause’s puzzle.
Justice O’Connor, for example, wrote passages that represent both a deferential

50. 505 U.S. 577 (1992).

51. Ledewitz, supra note 48, at 117.

52. Id. at 119.

53. Id. at 146 (referring to multiple Supreme Court opinions as “highly normative”).

54. Id. at 116 (noting that the justices “abdicated authority to set objective standards over a

wide range of issues”).

55. Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. To Be Chief Justice of

the United States: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 55, 56 (2005)

(statement of John G. Roberts, Nominee to be Chief Justice of the United States) (noting his role

was to be an umpire, and assuring the Senate Judiciary Committee that he recognized “it’s my job

to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat”).

56. Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 866-67 (1992) (announcing that

in cases like Roe v. Wade, the Court had resolved an “intensely divisive controversy” because “the

Court’s interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end

their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution”).

57. Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1 (1947). 

58. See, e.g., supra notes 29 and 42.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 315

view of religion in the public square59 and passages as separationist as anything
penned by a justice in the last one-hundred years.60 One could attribute a dark
motive to this, but the answer that comports more with the tone and tenor of her
writing is simply that these cases are difficult, and the same mind can come to
different but authentic conclusions.

The most important outcome of the multiple-test phenomenon, though, is
unmistakable: it limits certainty. A test simply cannot serve as an effective
constraint on the judiciary if its application is optional. Having a test offers some
confidence a court is acting in a principled way, but having a multitude of tests,
deployable at will, removes any promise of consistency and reawakens fears of
judicial aggressiveness.

This can be seen in the lower courts’ behavior. The opinions there deploy
these tests, often in clusters and frequently with a sense of confusion. For a lower-
court judge, wishing not to commit reversible error, the safest course may
generally be to analyze the situation under as many tests as possible. After all, the
Supreme Court has used this method, even though it clearly adds no legal
certainty.61 

C. A Fear of Bulldozers?

Another possible reason for the multiple-test regime is a fear, which may
spring from better or worse motives, of the Court functioning as a destroyer of
American identity. There are undoubtedly occasions in America’s past that would
be troubling today. Numerous cities and towns are named in overtly religious
ways, some official seals bear images that are unmistakably sectarian, and a not-
insignificant number of mottos are clearly prayerful. To cynical observers of the
Court, the hesitancy at removing such things reflects no more than a self-serving
fear of a pitchfork-and-torches response by the body politic, outraged that the
nine justices have, at last, gone too far.62 And if Lemon’s purpose prong is to be

59. See, e.g., Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 693 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring)

(referring to such affirmations as “In God We Trust” on the coins as “government

acknowledgments of religion [that] serve, in the only ways reasonably possible in our culture, the

legitimate secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions, expressing confidence in the future,

and encouraging the recognition of what is worthy of appreciation in society”) (emphasis added).

60. See, e.g., McCreary Cty. v. Am. Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 883

(O’Connor, J., concurring) (2005) (“Allowing government to be a potential mouthpiece for

competing religious ideas risks the sort of division that might easily spill over into suppression of

rival beliefs. Tying secular and religious authority together poses risks to both.”).

61. See, e.g., Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000).

62. The Court’s forays into government-religious speech have produced hostile reactions that

may have surprised the court itself. See, e.g., Lauren Maisel Goldsmith & James R. Dillon, The

Hallowed Hope: The School Prayer Cases and Social Change, 59 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 409, 424

(2015) (“The Engel decision [prohibiting New York’s Regents Prayer] alone generated more hate

mail than any previous decision in the institution’s history, beating out its enormously controversial

decision in Brown v. Board of Education . . . .”).



316 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

taken literally, they must go too far. There is no way to find a non-religious
purpose for the adoption of a religious motto or erection of a religious symbol.
One can invoke history, but that only pushes the inquiry further back in time. A
serious examination of the original purpose that reveals it to have been religious
would mean, under a literal reading of Lemon, that courts would have to order a
stripping of religion from the public life of the United States. This the Supreme
Court has been hesitant to do.

To less cynical people, the Court’s hesitancy arises from a legitimate desire
to recognize an evolving American experience. To such people, a willingness to
abide by some acts of government speech that violate the plain meaning of an
applicable test does not show inconsistency or cowardice. Instead, it demonstrates
subtle judging, recognizing that complex factors are present in any given
situation. A prominent example of this subtlety is the “ceremonial-deism”
exception. In his dissent in the crèche-and-reindeer case, Lynch v. Donnelly,
Justice Brennan adopted Dean Eugene Rostow’s idea that precisely what
insulated phrases like “In God We Trust” and the Pledge’s “under God” from
constitutional objection was that “they have lost through rote repetition any
significant religious content.”63

Whether out of a fearful dodging of the consequences of the Establishment
Clause tests, or out of a judicious desire to recognize that the nation has evolved
regardless of whether one thinks the Constitution has, neither a regime that allows
for choosing among a variety of tests nor one that creates discretionary-internal
exceptions offers any real balm for religious conflict. The former gives rise to the
allegation that the courts are practicing results-oriented jurisprudence, while the
latter raises the logical question of why there should be such an exception and the
practical question of how one figures out when it should be invoked. It is worth
noting, for example, that the foremost proponent of the ceremonial-deism
exception would have allowed the invocation of God in the national motto as well
as in the Pledge of Allegiance,64 but would have ordered the removal of a forty-
year-old Ten Commandments monument from Texas’s state-capitol grounds.65

But this desire, whether cynical or not, to avoid the harshest results of
application of the tests has not led most justices to a complete retreat from
enforcing the Establishment Clause. Perhaps the most powerful example of this
came during the exchange between Justices Scalia and Stevens in the Ten
Commandments cases of 2005. As noted above, it was during that discussion that
Justice Scalia proposed that the Establishment Clause allowed for the acceptance
of overtly monotheistic expressions of government approval.66 In response,
Justice Stevens challenged him to modify his proposed test to one allowing
overtly Christian expressions by the government; as Justice Stevens pointed out,
when the Founding Fathers spoke in the language of religion, they did so with the

63. 465 U.S. at 716.

64. Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 37 (2004) (O’Connor, J.,

concurring in judgment).

65. Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 737 (2005) (O’Connor, J., dissenting).

66. See supra notes 42-44 and accompanying text.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 317

words of Christianity, not some polyglot “monotheism.”67 Justice Scalia
responded fiercely, recognizing this challenge for what it was.68 To accept the
government may openly favor Christianity is not to weaken the Establishment
Clause, but to read it out of the Constitution altogether. If the U.S. government
could announce that Christianity or even a sect of Christianity was the True
Religion, what would be the point of forbidding an establishment of religion?

D. The Combatants

1. The Holy Warriors.—There are many advocates seeking a greater
recognition of faith by the government. For example, a number of lobbying
groups and law firms have mission statements that explicitly seek promotion of
religious speech and activity by the government.69 Some expand their focus to
include other issues that are only tenuously connected to religious freedom.70

Some narrow “religious freedom” to the promotion of an odd hybrid of Judaism
and Christianity,7 1 or even a specific subset of Christianity.72 Prominent public
figures, including executives, legislators, and judges, have also taken up this

67. Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 729 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“[T]he history of the Establishment

Clause’s original meaning just as strongly supports a preference for Christianity as it does a

preference for monotheism.”).

68. McCreary Cty. v. Am. Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 897 (2005) (Scalia,

J., dissenting) (referring to Justice Stevens’s evidence of favoritism of Christianity among some of

the founders as merely “providing a cloud of obfuscating smoke”).

69. These include, for example, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which defines itself

as “the only non–profit, public–interest legal and educational institute that protects the free

expression of all religious traditions” but acknowledges that it works “also in defense of the

government when it is sued for being religion-friendly.” History, BECKET, http://www.becketlaw.

org/about-us/history/ [https://perma.cc/HEY5-JPN4] (last visited May 14, 2018).

70. The American Center for Law and Justice, although founded “to protect religious and

constitutional freedoms,” acknowledges that it also advocates in areas such as national security and

“protecting patriotic expression.” Our Mission, AM. CTR. FOR LAW AND JUST ICE,

https://aclj.org/our-mission/about-aclj [https://perma.cc/P9R8-LJR8] (last visited May 14, 2018).

71. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the Town of Greece in its Supreme

Court litigation, announced its concern that as “secular forces chip away at our nation’s Judeo-

Christian roots, religious freedom is increasingly threatened.” The organization makes the claim

that “rights are grounded in the unique, Judeo-Christian concept of man’s inherent dignity as a

creature made in God’s image, endowed with reason, free will, and an eternal soul.” Issues: Our

First Freedom, ALL. DEFENDING FREEDOM, https://www.adflegal.org/issues/religious-freedom

[https://perma.cc/F436-R7GP] (last visited May 14, 2018).

72. Although the Becket Fund proudly touts the fact it seeks to protect all faiths,

organizations such as Liberty Counsel, associated with Liberty University, offer a narrower focus:

one of its prominent Religious Freedom issues is titled “You Can Help Us Save Christmas,” which

includes announcements of their achievements such as “[r]estoring nativity scenes that have been

banned from public property[.]” You Can Help Us Save Christmas, LIBERTY COUNSEL,

https://www.lc.org/christmas [https://perma.cc/274P-ZMES] (last visited May 14, 2018).



318 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

cause.73 For the Holy Warriors, and their supporters on the Supreme Court,
complaints by Fervent Separationists are petty. In objecting to the denial of
certiorari when a lower court prevented a public-school graduation from taking
place in a church, Justice Scalia reduced the opponents’ objections to mere
matters of taste.74

2. The Fervent Separationists.—But it takes two forces to have a war, and an
opposing side takes up arms against these Holy Warriors. There is a group of
Fervent Separationists, likewise organized into associations and firms that
steadfastly fight to strengthen the wall between Church and State.75 As with their
ideological foes, there are individuals who play leading roles in the struggle.76 It
sometimes seems no cause is too small to catch the interest of those engaged in
protecting their view of religious liberty from those they portray as theocrats.77

73. Probably none more prominently than Alabama’s Roy Moore, whose tenure in the state

judiciary has twice included suspension from the bench for acting in accordance with what he

believed were his religious duties. First, as Chief Justice in Alabama he installed an enormous Ten

Commandments monument in the courthouse one summer night in 2001. Frederick Mark Gedicks

& Roger Hendrix, Uncivil Religion: Judeo-Christianity and the Ten Commandments, 110 W. VA.

L. REV. 275, 289 (2007). When he refused to comply with the order of a federal court to remove

it, he was himself removed from office. Id. at 290. After the people of Alabama returned him to the

court, and the Supreme Court found a right to marital equality in the Fourteenth Amendment, he

was removed a second time; this followed his order to the probate judges of Alabama to ignore the

U.S. Supreme Court and refuse to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Marsha B. Freeman,

Holier than You and Me: ‘Religious Liberty’ is the New Bully Pulpit and its New Meaning is

Endangering Our Way of Life, 69 ARK. L. REV. 881, 888 (2017).

74. Elmbrook Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 134 S. Ct. 2283, 2283 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“Some there

are—many, perhaps—who are offended by public displays of religion. Religion, they believe, is

a personal matter; if it must be given external manifestation, that should not occur in public places

where others may be offended. I can understand that attitude: It parallels my own toward the

playing in public of rock music or Stravinsky.”).

75. E.g., The American Atheists Legal Center, like the Becket Fund, sees themselves as

fighting for “religious equality for all Americans,” but does so by defending “what Thomas

Jefferson called the ‘wall of separation’ between state and church created by the First Amendment.”

Our Vision, AM. ATHEISTS, https://www.atheists.org/about/our-vision/ [https://perma.cc/KWQ4-

M39U] (last visited May 14, 2018).

76. E.g., Michael Newdow, a prominent atheist physician and attorney, was granted leave

by the Supreme Court to represent himself in a suit designed to prevent elementary school teachers

from including the words “under God” when leading their classes in the Pledge of Allegiance. See

Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 3, 5 (2004). 

77. See, e.g., Weinbaum v. Las Cruces Pub. Sch., 465 F. Supp. 2d 1182, 1185 (D. N.M.

2006), aff’d, 541 F.3d 1017 (10th Cir. 2008) (objecting to the use of crosses in the emblems of

maintenance vehicles and schools in Las Cruces—“the crosses”—New Mexico); Pat Rice, 

Warranted or not, the cross in DeLand’s seal creates a First Amendment debate, DAYTONA BEACH

NEWS-JOURNAL (Sep. 8, 2013, 12:01 AM), http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/LK/

20130908/News/605073260/DN/ [https://perma.cc/93FH-PJVK] (discussing a demand by

Americans United for Separation of Church and State that the Florida city remove the cross from



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 319

Intriguingly, Fervent Separationists include not only atheists and agnostics, but
also religious people who voice a much older argument: the idea that entwining
religion with government damages, rather than advances, the faith.78

3. The Inevitability of War.—When any area of the law contains two such
committed sets of foes, it is inevitable that they will struggle. In such settings, the
advocate’s perspective is always different from that of a judge or scholar. The
judges and scholars seek to understand the legal formulae and apply the legal tests
to reach the “right” legal result. But, for the advocates who wage such holy wars,
the constitutional test is always a tool to deploy in seeking the result that benefits
the client. As Clarence Darrow noted about advocates long ago, they seek to
win.79

III. THE RELIANCE ON FALSE FACTS

A. Some Prominent Uses of False Facts as a Way Out

Out of a desire to avoid the harsh realities of the Lemon test, combined with
an unwillingness to eviscerate completely the Establishment Clause, a Muse-like
path of lying to rustic shepherds arose. In several prominent cases, the Court’s
depiction of facts bore little resemblance to any that a journalist might report.8 0

The focus on purpose in the Lemon test often made such distortions necessary, as
the facts’ reality evinced a purpose that was far from secular.

its 131 year-old city seal); Tom Shortell, Lehigh County sued over Latin cross in seal,  MORNING

CALL (Aug. 20, 2016, 7:45 PM), http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-lehigh-county-seal-lawsuit-

20160819-story.html [https://perma.cc/DE4H-KW78] (discussing a lawsuit by the Freedom From

Religion Foundation against Lehigh County for its inclusion of a Latin Cross in the center of a

decades-old seal that also included “a heart said to symbolize Allentown, the U.S. and Pennsylvania

flags, bunting, the Liberty Bell, factories and a farm scene”). 

78. Timothy J. Tracey, Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should: Equal Protection,

Free Speech, and Religious Worship, 36 N. ILL. U. L. REV. 58, 61 (2016) (“Christian lawyers

pushed for sectarian prayer at state and local legislatures. But they failed to consider that they

denigrated prayer in the process . . . . The lawyers, thus, gutted prayer of its spiritual character to

get it to pass muster under the Establishment Clause.”). Professor Dane’s criticism may be even

sharper, noting that neither the majority nor the dissent in Town of Greece took religion seriously.

Perry Dane, Prayer is Serious Business: Reflections on Town of Greece, 15 RUTGERS J.L. &

RELIGION 611, 628 (2014) (“But if the purpose of official prayer is not (ahem) to pray, then all the

lesser purposes the Court allows, including lending ‘gravity to public business,’ are merely play-

acting - using and abusing religion for secular ends.”).

79. CLARENCE DARROW, CRIME: ITS CAUSE AND TREATMENT 128 (1922) (noting that the law

furnishes “a tribunal where the contending lawyers can fight, not for justice, but to win . . . .

Oftentimes the only question settled in court is the relative strength and cunning of the lawyers.”).

80. Douglas Laycock, Government-Sponsored Religious Displays: Transparent

Rationalizations and Expedient Post-Modernism, 61 CASE W. RES. 1211, 1211 (2011) (referring

to efforts to “manipulate the findings of fact”). 



320 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

1. The Meaning of Monuments: The Cross and the Klan.—Sometimes, the
Court has deployed facts in ways that suggest a willingness to see only what is
visible. This was the case with the Latin cross that the Ku Klux Klan sought to
erect in December 1993 in a city square in Columbus, Ohio.81 Because Justice
Scalia’s plurality opinion limited itself to the question of whether the
Establishment Clause justified the exclusion of religious speech from an
otherwise public forum, it specifically ignored any possible political meaning of
the cross when erected by the Klan.82 For the purpose of this case, the cross would
be treated by the Court as an unadulterated religious symbol.

It was left to Justice Thomas’s concurrence to note the obvious: “the fact that
the legal issue before us involves the Establishment Clause should not lead
anyone to think that a cross erected by the Ku Klux Klan is a purely religious
symbol.”83 After a short recounting of the Klan’s use of crosses as “a symbol of
white supremacy and a tool for the intimidation and harassment,”84 Justice
Thomas concluded that the proposed display “had a primarily nonreligious
purpose.”85 

Justice Thomas nonetheless agreed with applying the tests as if the speech
were religious. Ultimately, the Court was unwilling to examine deeply motive or
meaning, concluding that the religious expression was purely private and
occurred in a designated public forum that was publicly announced and open to
all equally.86

2. The Meaning of Monuments: The Cross on the Rock.—Half a continent
away, a different fate awaited a similar Latin cross. This cross stood on Sunrise
Rock, a bit of federal land in California.87 Although a silent sentinel in the desert,
the cross nonetheless underwent an extraordinary procedural history that peaked
judicially in the Supreme Court’s decision in Salazar v. Buono.88

The abridged version of the cross’s story goes like this: members of the
Veterans of Foreign Wars erected a wooden cross on federally owned land in the
California desert.89 They did so to honor soldiers who died in World War I, a fact
they acknowledged with two wooden signs.90 Over time, the cross and signs

81. Capitol Square Review & Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 758 (1995).

82. Id. at 760.

83. Id. at 770 (Thomas, J., concurring).

84. Id.

85. Id. at 771. Indeed, on another occasion, Justice Thomas relied on a compelling analogy

offered by a state that suggested the real communicative value of a Latin cross in the hands of the

Klan: that a white person waking to discover a burning cross outside his home would call the

police, but would call the fire department if the item were a burning circle or square. Virginia v.

Black, 538 U.S. 343, 391 (2003) (Thomas, J., dissenting).

86. Capitol Square Review, 515 U.S. at 770 (Scalia, J.). 

87. Salazar v. Buono, 559 U.S. 700, 706 (2010).

88. Id. at 705-06.

89. Id. at 706.

90. In their entirety, the signs read “The Cross, Erected in Memory of the Dead of All Wars,”

and “Erected 1934 by Members of Veterans of Foregin [sic] Wars, Death Valley post 2884.” Buono



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 321

eroded, and, at some point, the signs totally disappeared.91 People continued to
gather for worship at the cross, especially on Easter Sunday.92 The cross itself was
replaced several times, culminating in 1998, when a gentleman removed what
remained of the existing cross, and replaced it with a much more durable version
made of metal pipe.93

The next year, a retired National Park Service employee asked the National
Park Service for permission to install a Buddhist Stupa near the Christian Cross.94

Rejecting this attempt to create a designated-public forum on Sunset Rock, the
National Park Service instead planned to remove the cross.95 Congress intervened,
preventing the spending of any appropriated funds to remove the cross.96 The
ensuing legal battle would last for eleven years—more than twice the length of
World War I itself, and almost a decade longer than the U.S.’s participation in
World War I. The judicial battle reached its own version of November 1918 in
2010, when the Supreme Court opined in a by-now gloriously procedurally-
mucky case.97 

The Ninth Circuit had nixed a federal-land swap that would make the land
containing the cross private, and hence not subject to the Establishment Clause.98

Although the Supreme Court disagreed about many things, five justices agreed

v. Kempthorne, 502 F.3d 1069, 1072 (9th Cir. 2007). 

91. Id.

92. Id.

93. Id. The gentleman, Mr. Henry Sandoz, drilled holes into Sunrise Rock to secure the metal

cross. Id. 

94. Buono v. Norton, 212 F. Supp. 2d 1202, 1205-06 (D. Cal. 2002). The retired employee,

Mr. Herman R. Hoops, wrote the letter under the name “Sherpa San Harold Horpa.” Id. He later

recounted that he developed the idea in conjunction with another retired NPS officer, Frank Buono,

who would become the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Id. Asking for permission to add a second

religious symbol, Mr. Hoops explained, would prevent the government from fighting him on the

facts. Id.; see also Thomas Curwen, A Mojave Desert cross brings a lot of things to bear, L.A.

TIMES (Oct. 21, 2012), http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/21/local/la-me-mojave-cross-20121022

[https://perma.cc/Y7H9-RLPF].

95. Buono, 212 F. Supp. 2d at 1206.

96. Id. at 1206. A year later, Congress declared the cross a national memorial honoring U.S.

participation in the First World War. Id. at 1206-07.

97. Salazar v. Buono, 559 U.S. 700, 707-11 (2010). As a technical matter, the case before

the Supreme Court concerned only “whether the District Court properly enjoined the Government

from implementing the land-transfer statute.” Id. at 714. At least one scholar, though, has argued

that the plurality at least was re-litigating the Establishment Clause matter that ought to have been

res judicata. See David B. Owens, From Substance to Shadows: An Essay on Salazar V. Buono and

Establishment Clause Remedies, 20 B.U. PUB. INT. L.J. 289 (2011). As the following paragraphs

suggest, I concur with Professor Owens.

98. Buono, 502 F.3d at 1085-86. The Court of Appeals concurred with the District Court’s

assessment that the government had engaged in “herculean efforts” to maintain the cross where it

had been “without actually curing the continuing Establishment Clause violation.” Id. (quoting

Buono v. Norton, 364 F. Supp. 2d 1175, 1182 (D. Cal. 2005)). 



322 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

that the Court of Appeals was wrong.99 Justice Kennedy, with the full agreement
of Chief Justice Roberts and the partial agreement of Justice Alito, held that the
lower courts had been insufficiently deferential to the government’s rationale for
creating the land transfer.100 In short, even though the government wanted to
preserve the cross, this was not prohibited by the Establishment Clause, because
“[p]rivate citizens put the cross on Sunrise Rock to commemorate American
servicemen who had died in World War I. Although certainly a Christian symbol,
the cross was not emplaced on Sunrise Rock to promote a Christian message.”101

Justice Alito agreed with most of Justice Kennedy’s reasoning, but would not
have remanded the case for the lower courts to reconsider the land swap more
deferentially.102 He found ample evidence in the record that Congress had not
sought to establish a religion, but rather wished to “commemorate our Nation’s
war dead and to avoid the disturbing symbolism that would have been created by
the destruction of the monument.”103

Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, argued the federal courts had no
jurisdiction in the case: “our authority is limited to ‘announcing the fact and
dismissing the cause.’”104 He argued the issue in the case was not Frank Buono’s
standing to seek the removal of the cross, but Frank Buono’s standing to prevent
the federal government from transferring ownership of a parcel of land.105

Because he concluded that Buono lacked such standing, remaining “within the
bounds of our constitutional authority” required eliminating the injunction against
the land transfer.106 

What is astonishing about the Muse-like opinions of the justices whose votes
reversed the lower court is the way in which they discussed the case’s facts. At
issue was a Latin cross, made of metal pipe, without any identifying sign. Such
a display would appear to be a Christian one—indeed, all the justices voting to
allow the cross to remain (albeit in private hands) acknowledged that fact in some
fashion.107

The justices seemed more eager to describe the cross, though, in terms of

99. Salazar, 559 U.S. at 700. 

100. Id. at 715 (“By dismissing Congress’s motives as illicit, the District Court took

insufficient account of the context in which the statute was enacted and the reasons for its

passage.”).

101. Id.

102. Id. at 723 (Alito, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).

103. Id. at 729.

104. Id. (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (quoting Ex parte McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.)

506, 514 (1869)).

105. Indeed, Justice Scalia noted that, as Buono had objected to there being a cross on public

land, his objection had been “entirely effective in remedying that complaint, having induced

Congress to abandon public ownership of the land.” Id. at 733.

106. Id. at 735.

107. “Although certainly a Christian symbol . . . .” Id. at 715 (Kennedy, J.); “The cross is of

course the preeminent symbol of Christianity . . . .” Id. at 725 (Alito, J.); Buono “has no objection

to Christian symbols on private property.” Id. at 732 (Scalia, J.). 



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 323

purpose—a purpose that must surely be invisible to anyone seeing the cross
without any sign. For example, Justice Kennedy called the object in question a
monument twice and a memorial another dozen or so times.108 All of this was part
of a rhetorical exercise that led Justice Kennedy to conclude that “a Latin cross
is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs,”109 a staggering assessment.110

Justice Alito used the same technique. His opinion mentioned Christianity only
twice, made three references to a memorial, nineteen to a monument (often
modified by the adjective “historic”), and four to World War I.111 Perhaps because
his focus was limited to standing, or perhaps because he authored the idea that the
government might choose to favor monotheistic religions, Justice Scalia seemed
least interested in characterizing the facts in a particular way, merely noting
Buono’s hostility to Christian displays on public land and acknowledging
Congress’s expressed desire to preserve the object as a “war memorial.”112 At oral
argument, Justice Scalia went even further, believing it “an outrageous
conclusion” that a cross only honored Christians, because the cross is “the most
common symbol” of final-resting places.113 As Professor Laycock has noted, this
comment “can be made only from deep inside a Christian worldview. Unthinking
Christians may intend a cross to honor all the war dead, but that does not create
any sensible theory by which the cross actually honors non-Christians.”114

The cross in Columbus and the cross on Sunrise Rock were symbolically
equivalent. Each stood on public land representing the critical moment of
Christianity—the crucifixion. Yet to reach its conclusions, the Court treated one
as a form of religious speech and the other as a secular recollection of an
unmentioned war.

108. See generally id.

109. Id. at 721 (emphasis added).

110. Laycock, supra note 80, at 1239 (“All the secondary meanings to which the cross has

been put are derived from, and dependent on, this primary meaning . . . . Why does the cross honor

deceased Christian soldiers? Because it symbolizes the promise that they will rise from the dead

and live forever.”).

111. Justice Alito joined Justice Kennedy in acknowledging the religious dispute at issue here:

“The cross is of course the preeminent symbol of Christianity, and Easter services have long been

held on Sunrise Rock.” Salazar, 559 U.S. at 725. As the phrasing of that sentence suggests, the very

first word in the next sentence is “but.” Id.  

112. Id. at 732. Justice Scalia did, however, make one assessment of the facts that exceeds

believability by claiming that the government’s reversion interest in the statute “does not depend

on whether the cross remains.” Id. Even a casual review of the facts in this case, to say nothing of

the expressed desire of the Veterans of Foreign Wars to preserving “the seven-foot-tall cross,”

confirms that the preservation of the Latin cross was always the entire point, notwithstanding;

Justice Scalia’s claim that the VFW might replace the cross with some other symbol or convey the

land to someone who would. Id. at 726 n.4.

113. Transcript of Oral Argument at 38-39, Salazar v. Buono, 559 U.S. 700 (2010) (No. 08-

472), 2009 WL 3197881.

114. Laycock, supra note 80, at 1240.



324 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

3. Legislative Prayer: Preaching to Legislators.—Another pair of cases that
illustrates the false-facts phenomenon concerns legislative prayer. An early case
involved a challenge to Nebraska’s practice of appointing a chaplain to open
legislative sessions with prayer.115 Famously, the Court used it as the opportunity
to create a bypass around the Lemon test: Chief Justice Burger, the author of the
Lemon test, noted that the court below had used it to strike down the practice.116

Then he simply ignored it, focusing instead on “Nebraska’s practice of over a
century, consistent with two centuries of national practice . . . .”117

In describing what was at issue in the unicameral legislature of Lincoln,
Nebraska, the Court did not so much distort the facts as downplay some to a
surprising degree. For example, the Court acknowledged that Nebraska had paid
“the same minister for 16 years” to be the chaplain, and even published his
prayers at taxpayer expense for several years.118 The Court, though, was unable
to “perceive any suggestion that choosing a clergyman of one denomination
advances the beliefs of a particular church.”119 To do so, it ignored the
fundamental logic of majority rule, which prompted Justice Stevens’s dissent.120

Even more, the Court dismissed the evidence at trial that directly contradicted the
Court’s notion that the chaplain was chosen not on the basis of denomination but
because of “his performance and personal qualities.”121 Indeed, “[a]ll witnesses
at trial agreed that the prolonged retention of one chaplain fosters the impression
that his religion is the ‘official’ or ‘normal’ religion of the State.”122 The
Chairman of the Legislature’s Executive Board even conceded that “most
legislators would object if a non-Christian were appointed,” and that the
legislature would not permit “a Buddhist monk or a Sioux medicine man to give
the daily prayer over . . . the length of [the chaplain’s] tenure.”123

The trial accumulated evidence that the majority of the state legislature
unapologetically selected a representative of one of the strongest sects of the
strongest faith in the State to be the official chaplain, and had even published his

115. Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 784 (1983).

116. Id. at 786.

117. Id. at 790.

118. Id. at 785 n.1. The District Court, which had declined to enjoin the practice of legislative

prayer, had enjoined the printing of prayers, as it had “no secular purpose.” Chambers v. Marsh,

504 F. Supp. 585, 591 (D. Neb. 1980). The Nebraska legislature did not appeal the ruling on

printing prayers. Petition for Writ of Certiorari at 9, Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983) (No.

82-23), 1982 WL 1034558.

119. Marsh, 463 U.S. at 793. 

120. “Prayers may be said by a Catholic priest in the Massachusetts Legislature and by a

Presbyterian minister in the Nebraska Legislature, but I would not expect to find a Jehovah’s

Witness or a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy or the Reverend Moon serving as the official chaplain

in any state legislature.” Id. at 823 (Stevens, J., dissenting). 

121. Id. at 793.

122. Brief for the Respondent at 3, Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (No. 82-23), 1983 WL

952093.

123. Id. at 2-3.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 325

prayers at taxpayer offense.124 But the Court simply ignored this evidence and
found the practice permissible.125

4. Legislative Prayer: Preaching (with One’s Back) to Legislators.—The
Supreme Court’s latest visit to the legislative-prayer battlefield provided the
opportunity to create even more Muse-like confusion over facts. To read the
majority’s rendition of the background of Town of Greece v. Galloway126 is to
discover that Greece, a small New York community, had a practice of opening
town meetings with a brief invocation.127 The invocations were open to leaders
of a variety of faiths from the community,128 preceded by no particular directive
or command from the town council,129 and were generally inoffensive moments
of tradition designed to achieve the purpose of bringing the town council
together.1 3 0 According to the Court, these prayers, like those in Marsh, were
directed to the government officials themselves.131 Thus, they created no coercion
in the community,132 nor any reason to suspect that the government was endorsing
any faith. The majority conceded that most of the invocations were given by
Christian officials, but noted that was merely a result of demographics.133

It was left to Justice Breyer to note that although Greece was largely
Christian, it contained a Buddhist temple, and had several Jewish synagogues just
outside the town’s borders.134 He also noted that during the decade at issue, only
four of the 120 invocations were done by non-Christians, and that all of these
occurred during the year in which the original plaintiffs complained about the
religious practice.135 

Additionally, Justice Kagan’s dissent noted  the “chaplain of the month”

124. Marsh, 463 U.S. at 785 n.1.

125. Id. at 795. 

126. 134 S. Ct. 1811 (2014).

127. Id. at 1816.

128. Id. (“[The town’s] leaders maintained that a minister or layperson of any persuasion,

including an atheist, could give the invocation.”). 

129. Id. at 1826 (“The analysis would be different if town board members directed the public

to participate in the prayers, singled out dissidents for opprobrium, or indicated that their decisions

might be influenced by a person’s acquiescence in the prayer opportunity.”).

130. Id. at 1816 (“The resulting prayers often sounded both civic and religious themes. Typical

were invocations that asked the divinity to abide at the meeting and bestow blessings on the

community . . . .”).

131. Id. at 1825 (“The principal audience for these invocations is not, indeed, the public, but

lawmakers themselves . . . .”).

132. Id. at 1826 (“[R]espondents stated that the prayers gave them offense and made them feel

excluded and disrespected. Offense, however, does not equate to coercion.”).

133. Id. at 1824 (“That nearly all of the congregations in town turned out to be Christian does

not reflect an aversion or bias on the part of town leaders against minority faiths. So long as the

town maintains a policy of nondiscrimination, the Constitution does not require it to search beyond

its borders for non-Christian prayer givers in an effort to achieve religious balancing.”). 

134. Id. at 1839 (Breyer, J., dissenting).

135. Id. 



326 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

faced the citizens attending the meeting, and not the Town Board.136 The
chaplains routinely asked the attending citizens to stand and “pray as we begin
this evening’s town meeting.”137 And Board members would often note the end
of the prayer by making the sign of the cross and saying “Amen.”138

None of these facts by themselves, of course, necessarily compels a different
result from Marsh. Taken together, though, they present a very different picture
than that offered by the Court.139 Nebraska’s chaplain, for example, faced the
legislators—and religious leaders commonly face their audience.1 4 0 Here, though,
it is difficult to reconcile the Court’s assertion that the town’s officials were the
intended target of the invocations with the reality that the chaplains faced away
from them. While there are religious traditions in which the leader at times faces
away from the target audience, in those settings the leader is facing a holy item
or its symbol.141 

Other facts made the picture look even more sectarian and coercive. In
addition to Justice Kagan noting that the citizens in attendance were few in
number and almost invariably there to receive an award or present a complaint,142

the briefs indicate that high-school students participating in a government course
were required to attend.143 Also, witnesses assessed the average attendance at ten,
or even fewer than ten.144 The town Supervisor—who replaced a moment of
silence with the prayer practice—invited the chaplain to lead “our prayer.”1 45

Finally, the selection process bore little resemblance to the casual respect for
religious pluralism suggested by the Court.146

136. Id. at 1846 (Kagan, J., dissenting).

137. Id. at 1847.

138. Id.

139. Arguing that the Court was far too deferential to the majority faith, Professor Garfield

characterized the message to communities as that they need not try to accommodate minority

religions: “A bird’s-eye view of Town of Greece reveals that the Greece board made no effort--

zero--to accommodate the town’s religious minorities.” Alan E. Garfield, And the Wall Comes

Tumbling Down: How the Supreme Court Is Striking the Wrong Balance between Majority and

Minority Rights in Church-and-State Cases, 68 ARK. L. REV. 789, 806 (2015) (emphasis added). 

140. See, e.g., Town of Greece, 134 S. Ct. at 1848 (Kagan, J., dissenting). 

141. See, e.g., Martin Mosebach, Return to Form: The Fate of the Rite is the Fate of the

Church, FIRST THINGS (Apr. 2017), https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/04/return-to-form

[https://perma.cc/F79K-TUUP] (noting that while he was a Cardinal, Pope Benedict had opposed

the reform that turned the Priest conducting the Eucharistic celebration around because “never in

her history, aside from a very few exceptions, had the Church celebrated the liturgy facing the

congregation”).

142. See Town of Greece, 134 S. Ct. at 1846 (Kagan, J., dissenting).

143. See Brief for Respondents at 6, Town of Greece v. Galloway, 134 S. Ct. 1811 (No. 12-

696), 2013 WL 5230742.

144. Id. at 2.

145. Id. at 8 (emphasis added).

146. Of the four non-Christian prayers that occurred in 2008, the year the litigation began, two

were from a Jewish layman who was a friend of Board member, one was a Wiccan Priestess who



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 327

Since the Court’s decision, little has changed in Greece. Subsequent meetings
have evidenced a procedure extraordinarily slanted in favor of Christian
ministers, with the anomalous year of 2008 looking more and more like it existed
to fortify a litigation position. The Court was willing to accept that the Town of
Greece “made reasonable efforts to identify all of the congregations located
within its borders,” and the fact that “nearly all of the congregations in town
turned out to be Christian does not reflect an aversion or bias on the part of town
leaders against minority faiths.”147 It is at least suggestive, though, that during the
initial year of litigation, the Town was able to have one-third of the “chaplains of
the month” be non-Christian. But since then, the invocations have reverted to
something much closer to pre-2008 figures. A review of the bi-monthly town
minutes for two years after the decision indicates that of the 22 reported
invocations, 19 were unmistakably Christian.148A representative of the Baha’i
faith gave the only religious but non-Christian invocation.149 And two atheists,
including one of the plaintiffs from the case, gave invocations.150 The Town may
well have read the Court’s decision in the same way as the Deputy General
Counsel of the Beckett Fund: that the religious wars are over because Marsh
trumps Lemon, and that a regime of sectarian prayer at lower levels of
government is now fully constitutional.151

requested the opportunity after seeing reports about the controversy, and the fourth was the leader

of a local Baha’i Temple added by the Town to its list of “pastors” after the onset of litigation. Id.

at 13. Further, the scheduling clerk noted in a court filing that she would, in the future, use a

rotation system of an amended list that included “Jewish groups - several of which appear[ed] to

be cemeteries.” Id. at 13-14. This does not appear to have happened by the time of the

Respondent’s filing in the U.S. Supreme Court. Id. at 14. As one scholar noted, “the Town did

nothing to achieve even the semblance of religious equality in its selection procedures. For the

majority of the Court, nothing was good enough.” Alan Brownstein, Constitutional Myopia: The

Supreme Court’s Blindness to Religious Liberty and Religious Equality Values in Town of Greece

v. Galloway, 48 LOY. L.A. L. REV. 371, 426 (2014) (emphasis added).

147. Town of Greece, 134 S. Ct. at 1824.

148. All Board Meetings, TOWN OF GREECE, https://greeceny.gov/all-board-meetings

[https://perma.cc/R8ZX-97ET] (last visited June 11, 2018). 

149. Id.  

150. Id.

151. Eric Rassbach, Town of Greece v. Galloway: The Establishment Clause and the

Rediscovery of History, 2014 CATO SUP. CT. REV. 71, 84 (2013-14). Scholars who disagree with

Mr. Rassbach on the desirability of the conclusion tend nevertheless to agree with his conclusion

itself. See, e.g., Erwin Chemerinsky, Appearances Can Be Deceiving; October Term 2013 Moved

the Law to the Right, 17 GREEN BAG 2D 389, 394 (2014) (“Under any theory of the Establishment

Clause, the Town of Greece acted unconstitutionally.”); Christopher C. Lund, Leaving

Disestablishment to the Political Process, 10 DUKE J. CONST. L. & PUB. POL’Y 45, 45 (2014) (“The

Establishment Clause is pretty much done.”).



328 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

B. The Danger of False Facts: Majority Rule

Consistent among these cases is that the Court uses false facts to obscure the
government’s religious purposes. To some, that may not be troubling; indeed the
goal of the Holy Warriors may be to put government religious speech on the same
footing as government speech on any other topic, subject to none of the First
Amendment’s limitations.152 Even if one does not share the fear of proponents of
the endorsement test, an additional danger of such an outcome is the possible
subjection of minority faiths to real discrimination in the applicability of the law.
Majority faiths will always create exceptions to any rules that would otherwise
impinge on their own religious practices; they have no need to do so for minority
faiths. One need not rely merely on the logic of democratic theory in fearing false
facts in Establishment Clause cases: the history of the U.S. contains sufficient
examples of the phenomena that one can confidently predict its continuation.153

1. A Nineteenth-Century Example.—The nineteenth century, a time of growth
in the American identity, saw several examples of overt majority oppression of
minority faiths. The pilgrimage of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
was motivated by attempts to avoid both governmental and extra-judicial
harassment.154 When the migration came to rest, the nation responded with an
unprecedented set of limitations on the Mormons.155

The Latter-day Saints’ initial revelation promoted polygamy.156 But this
practice by the early Mormons scandalized their neighbors,157 and even reached
across the Atlantic to feature in the birth of the greatest literary detective.158 The
majority’s reaction included both legal restraint and extra-legal violence,

152. See Johanns v. Livestock Mktg. Ass’n, 544 U.S. 550, 559, 562-63 (2005).

153. Of course, there are contrary examples, in which the majority worked diligently to protect

the rights of minority faiths. Such circumstances—such as the oath or military service

accommodations often available to Quakers, see City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 557-58

(1997)—may be limited to minority faiths that do not threaten majority religions.

154. L. Rex Sears, Punishing the Saints for their “Peculiar Institution”: Congress on the

Constitutional Dilemmas, 2001 UTAH L. REV. 581, 582-85 (2001).

155. Frederick Mark Gedicks, Toward a Constitutional Jurisprudence of Religious Group

Rights, 1989 WIS. L. REV. 99, 111 (1989) (“Congress passed legislation which suspended civil and

common law rights of Mormons, including the spousal privilege against testimony and the rights

to vote and to serve on juries. Congress provided for the prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment

of hundreds of Mormon men. Congress also refused to admit Utah into the Union as a state. Finally,

in 1890, the Supreme Court upheld earlier legislation which revoked the legal charter of the

Mormon Church and provided for the forfeiture of virtually all of its property to the federal

government.”).

156. Id.

157. See, e.g., Christine Talbot, “Turkey is in Our Midst”: Orientalism and Contagion in

Nineteenth Century Anti-Mormonism, 8 J.L. & FAM. STUD. 363 (2006) (demonstrating the reliance

by nineteenth-century critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the tropes of

racism and disease to the body politic).

158. See ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, A STUDY IN SCARLET (1887).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 329

including the murder of the founder, Joseph Smith.159

Although the crisis was averted, and Utah’s statehood secured, after the
Mormon Church renounced polygamy,160 there remained an uneasy relationship
between the Mormons and the majority of Christians in the United States.161 This
story, often with a focus on a key Supreme Court contribution, Reynolds v. United
States,162 is told as part of the saga of the Free Exercise Clause.163 But there is a
critical Establishment Clause lesson to be taken away from the story of the
Mormons in the nineteenth century, as well. For just as it is true that the
government of the United States was unwilling to tolerate polygamy, so too had
been the earlier willingness of the authorities within the Mormon faith to make
exceptions for that very same phenomenon. For although the territorial legislature
of Utah did not specifically permit plural marriages, they did grant the  church
power to solemnize marriages permitted by the church’s revelations.164 The
common law did not allow such marriages, but the legislature, in 1854, confirmed
Governor Brigham Young’s assertion that the common law did not affect Utah
by prohibiting territorial courts from relying on any source of legal authority that
did not come from the legislature or the governor.165 Thus, members of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as a local majority in the Utah
Territory, created rules that left space for their own religious practice; once they
were subsumed into a larger, hostile majority, that space was taken away.166

159. Sears, supra note 154, at 584.

160. Professor Gedicks described the change as having come when the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints was “on the brink of financial ruin and legal oblivion.” Gedicks, supra note

155, at 111.

161. Even after statehood, with its accompanying guarantee that Utah would never allow

polygamy, the House of Representatives refused to seat B.H. Roberts, elected as Utah’s

representative in 1898, because he practiced polygamy. Sears, supra note 154, at 640-47. Also,

there was an extensive (but failed) movement in the Senate to exclude or expel Senator Reed

Smoot, who was not himself a polygamist but was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve

Apostles, a key governance body with the Mormon church. Id. at 647-50.

162. 98 U.S. 145 (1878).

163. See, e.g., Ira C. Lupu, Where Rights Begin: The Problem of Burdens on the Free Exercise

of Religion, 102 HARV. L. REV. 933, 937-42 (1989); Michael W. McConnell, The Origins and

Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 HARV. L. REV. 1409, 1412 (1990);

Frank S. Ravitch, The Unbearable Lightness of Free Exercise under Smith: Exemptions, Dasein,

and the More Nuanced Approach of the Japanese Supreme Court, 44 TEX. TECH L. REV. 259, 266-

67 (2011); Kathleen M. Sullivan, Religion and Liberal Democracy, 59 U. CHI. L. REV. 195, 219

(1992).

164. Sears, supra note 154, at 588.

165. Id. 

166. A similar phenomenon occurred later in the century as immigration from Catholic and

Jewish areas of Europe increased. While justices and scholars dispute how hostile to Roman

Catholicism the proposed—and almost passed—Blaine Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was,

it unquestionably gained at least some of its support from those voters and politicians who were

hostile to Catholicism. Compare Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U.S. 793, 828 (2000) (Thomas, J. plurality)



330 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

2. Twentieth-Century Examples.—If the events of the nineteenth century
seem sufficiently distant to be nonthreatening, later years confirm the
continuation of the pattern. The Twentieth Century saw similar combinations of
extra-judicial terror and legal impediment cast toward those whose faith varied
from the majority. Well known is the fact that the rejuvenated Ku Klux Klan
added Catholics and Jewish immigrants to African-Americans on their target
list.167 Likewise, a fair amount of hostility was directed at the Jehovah’s
Witnesses. 

Ironically, the Witnesses angered many of those around them because they
shared a belief with the Quakers: the inability to swear allegiance other than to
God. When the Supreme Court held that a Pennsylvania school district could
expel the ten- and twelve-year old Gobitis children for refusing to perform a flag
salute,168 violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses surged.169 Other Americans visited
so much hostility upon this minority faith that the Supreme Court took up the
same question again only three years later.170 In an astonishing reversal, the Court
utterly overturned this very recent precedent.171 Along the way, it offered perhaps

(“Opposition to aid to ‘sectarian’ schools acquired prominence in the 1870’s with Congress’s

consideration (and near passage) of the Blaine Amendment, which would have amended the

Constitution to bar any aid to sectarian institutions. Consideration of the amendment arose at a time

of pervasive hostility to the Catholic Church and to Catholics in general, and it was an open secret

that ‘sectarian’ was code for ‘Catholic.’”), with Robert D. Goldstein, The Structural Wall of

Separation and the Erroneous Claim of Anti-Catholic Discrimination, 13 CARDOZO PUB. L. POL’Y

& ET HICS J. 173, 215-16 (2014) (arguing that the motivation behind the Blaine Amendment was

not hostility to Catholicism as a faith, but to papal assertions of temporal power that were feared

to be illiberal and anti-democratic).

167. Wayne R. Allen, Klan, Cloth and Constitution: Anti-Mask Laws and the First

Amendment, 25 GA. L. REV. 819, 825-26 (1991).

168. Minersville Sch. Dist. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 591, 597-600 (1940). The Court held that

the nation “may in self-protection utilize the educational process for inculcating those almost

unconscious feelings which bind men together in a comprehending loyalty, whatever may be their

lesser differences and difficulties.” Id. at 600.

169. Brett G. Scharffs, Echoes from the Past: What We Can Learn about Unity, Belonging and

Respecting Differences from the Flag Salute Cases, 25 BYU J. PUB. L. 361, 371-72 (2011)

(“Hundreds of instances of vigilantism against Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to salute the flag

were reported in just the week following the decision. These included mob beatings, burning of

Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Halls, and attacks on houses where Jehovah’s Witnesses were

believed to live.”).

170. Only two years later, three justices who had joined the Gobitis opinion expressed their

regrets for having done so. In Jones v. City of Opelika, 316 U.S. 584 (1942), a taxation case that

had little in common with Gobitis other than the faith of the petitioners, Justices Black, Douglas,

and Murphy authored a joint dissent that called for the Court to reconsider Gobitis: “Since we

joined in the opinion in the Gobitis case, we think this is an appropriate occasion to state that we

now believe that it was also wrongly decided . . . . The First Amendment does not put the right

freely to exercise religion in a subordinate position.” Id. at 623-24.

171. W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943). The rejection of Gobitis



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 331

the most sweeping statement of the centrality of freedom of conscience that the
Court had ever authored: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional
constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be
orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force
citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”172

Before that reversal, though, governments at the state and local level, as key
political actors, reacted to the Gobitis decision by adopting flag-salute laws
themselves.173 One could argue that this was patriotic and not an attempt to exert
religious power. Yet, it is also the case that at the same time legislatures
throughout the nation were maintaining the power of blue laws, there were
requirements that businesses be closed on Sunday in conformity with the practice
of mainstream Christianity.174 The Supreme Court itself upheld the practice, both
when challenged as a violation of the Establishment Clause1 7 5 as well as when
members of their different faiths sought an exemption from a rule his or her
religion did not impose.176 Thus, the pattern repeated: majority faiths build the
laws to accommodate their own needs, and minority religions are treated quite
differently.

The flag salute to which the Barnette and Gobitis families objected had no
mention of any divine power. In 1954, Congress added the words “under God”
as a direct response to the Soviet Union’s alleged godlessness.177 Congress, in
doing so, made no attempt to hide the fact it disfavored atheists. Although several
constitutional attacks were made by opponents of the new words throughout the

by Barnette was so complete that the Court did not again cite Gobitis for its principal holding for

almost half a century. When the Court opted to decrease the reach of the Free Exercise Clause,

though, they dusted off Gobitis, using it as an illustration of “more than a century of our free

exercise jurisprudence” in which the Court had “never held that an individual’s religious beliefs

excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free

to regulate.” Emp’t Div. Dep’t Human Res. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 878-79 (1990).

172. Barnette, 319 U.S. at 642.

173. Scharffs, supra note 169, at 372.

174. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 422 (1961). The Court noted that such laws existed

even in colonial times, and began at least as early as the reign of Henry III in the thirteenth century.

Id. at 431-32.

175. The Court refused to conclude that the Establishment Clause would forbid government

action that “merely happens to coincide or harmonize with the tenets of some or all religions.” Id.

at 442.

176. On the same day as McGowan, the Court rejected a claim from a furniture store owner

who kept a Saturday closing day as required by his Orthodox Judaism. Braunfeld v. Brown, 366

U.S. 599, 608-09 (1961). The Court found that the existing system of a blue law that simply

happened to coincide with the majority faith did not limit this minority religion, it “simply regulates

a secular activity and, as applied to appellants, operates so as to make the practice of their religious

beliefs more expensive.” Id. at 605.

177. H.R. REP. NO. 83-1693, at 1-2 (1954), as reprinted in 1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2339, 2340

(“The inclusion of God in our pledge . . . . would serve to deny the atheistic and materialistic

concepts of communism with its attendant subservience of the individual.”).



332 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

remainder of the century, the Court continuously rebuffed them. The only
Supreme Court case to confront the issue directly avoided it on standing
grounds;178 state courts and lower-federal courts have swatted away objections to
formal declarations of reliance upon the Almighty in both federal and state
pledges.179

3. Current Examples.—Newspapers of the nineteenth century and radio and
television broadcasts of the twentieth provide ample examples of minority
religions being the subject of discrimination in a legal regime where false facts
disguise reality. Internet alerts and social-media posts of today offer a sad
confirmation that things have not changed.

Since the September 11th attacks of 2001, the fear of a supposed Islamic
takeover of the United States has fueled a rise in attempts to legally hinder that
religion. Numerous states and subsets of states have sought legal, or even
constitutional, prohibitions on the use of Sharia law.180 Sometimes these bans are
overt and explicit and single out Islam as a particular threat. Oklahoma took this
approach; deprived of false facts, federal courts can easily reject this form or
religious discrimination.181

Other times, though, the Muses’ willingness to falsify facts has allowed
prohibitions to remain. Such bans are not focused on Sharia alone. Instead, like
Kansas, they prohibit courts from citing any source of foreign law.182 This
apparent neutrality seems to satisfy the prohibition against sectarian
discrimination1 8 3 that troubled at least one federal court in considering a state
prohibition on Sharia law.184 The neutrality is only apparent, however: such
statutes are generally based on model legislation drafted by a private

178. Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 17-18 (2004).

179. See, e.g., Doe v. Acton-Boxborough Reg’l Sch. Dist., 8 N.E.3d 737, 740 (Mass. 2014);

Croft v. Perry, 604 F. Supp. 2d 932, 934 (N.D. Tex. 2009); Myers v. Loudoun Cty. Sch. Bd., 251

F. Supp. 2d 1262, 1277 (E.D. Va. 2003).

180. In Oklahoma, the proposed change to the state constitution, the Save Our State

Amendment, included the following requirement: “The courts shall not look to the legal precepts

of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia

Law.” Awad v. Ziriax, 670 F. 3d 1111, 1117-18 (10th Cir. 2012) (emphasis in original).

181. Id. at 1128-29 (finding strict scrutiny required because “the Oklahoma amendment

specifically names the target of its discrimination”).

182. The Kansas legislature, in 2012, adopted a statute making unenforceable any decision if

the court “bases its rulings or decisions in the matter at issue in whole or in part on any foreign law,

legal code or system that would not grant the parties affected by the ruling or decision the same

fundamental liberties, rights and privileges granted under the United States and Kansas

constitutions[.]” KAN. STAT. ANN. § 60-5103 (West 2012). 

183. Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982) (“The clearest command of the

Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over

another.”).

184. Awad, 670 F.3d. at 1128 (“The Larson test applies because the proposed amendment

discriminates among religions.”).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 333

organization, the American Public Policy Alliance.185 That organization, in
presenting its model legislation, made no attempt to disguise its purpose: “to
protect American citizens’ constitutional rights against the infiltration and
incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah
Law.”186 Indeed, the brief web page summarizing the model statute and
encouraging its use invokes Sharia law as a threat to American jurisprudence six
times; no other foreign legal system is mentioned at all.187

There is little reason to believe that while the people of Oklahoma were
intentionally seeking to discriminate on the basis of religion, the legislators of
Kansas were not. The only distinction between the two appears to be that the
Kansas state legislature had better learned how to deploy false facts in pursuit of
their desired agenda. By hiding their purpose behind a seemingly neutral one,
they asked a federal court to allow an anti-Islamic measure by treating it as the
equivalent of a war memorial and not a cross.

Of course, the most prominent recent example of the false-facts problem has
been in the attempts by President Trump, through a series of executive orders, to
deliver on a campaign promise to create an immigration and travel ban based on
Islam.188 A week after his inauguration, the President issued an executive order
that sought “to prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit
United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”189 Such an action is
unsurprising; indeed, one would be troubled by an American presidency seeking
to allow exploitation of the United States. The order did not, as the campaign
statements had, identify Muslims as a particular threat to the United States.
Instead, the order required cabinet officers to review the procedures used to
screen potential arrivals in the United States; suspended for ninety days all entry
from a group of nations identified in the order only by reference to a statute; and

185. Large parts of the Kansas statute appear to be identical to the model. Compare American

Laws for American Courts: Model Legislation, AM. PUB. POL’Y ALL., http://publicpolicyalliance.

org/legislation/american-laws-for-american-courts/ [https://perma.cc/Z46C-H57E] (last visited May

15, 2018), with  KAN. STAT. ANN. §§ 60-5101–5108 (2012).

186. See American Laws for American Courts: Model Legislation, supra note 185 (emphasis

added).

187. Id. (claiming to have found “extensive evidence that foreign laws and legal doctrines are

introduced into US state court cases, including, notably, Islamic law known as Shariah, which is

used in family courts and other courts in dozens of foreign Muslim-majority nations”).

188. Jenna Johnson, Trump calls for ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the

United States,’ WASH. POST (Dec. 7, 2015, 7:43 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-

politics/wp/2015/12/07/donald-trump-calls-for-total-and-complete-shutdown-of-muslims-entering-

the-united-states/?utm_term=.f2a003be9096 [https://perma.cc/3CU8-K8KN] (“Donald J. Trump

is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our

country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” then-candidate Trump reading

an official statement at a campaign rally in South Carolina, but “adding the word ‘hell’ for

emphasis.”).

189. Exec. Order No.13769, 82 Fed. Reg. 8,977 (Jan. 27, 2017) [hereinafter Exec. Order No.

13769].



334 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

suspended all refugee admissions for four months.190 
President Trump’s surrogates openly described the transition from Mr.

Trump’s campaign promises to what the order contained by revealing the
deployment of false facts. For example, former-mayor Rudy Giuliani argued it
would be legal to accomplish the new President’s campaign promise to ban
Muslims as long as the written policy “focused on, instead of religion, danger.”191

While it might be said that this first executive order focused on danger, it also
overtly used religion. As noted, the order suspended the operations of the refugee
program for four months.192 It then directed the administration to prioritize
religious claims for refugee status once the program resumed, but only for cases
in which “the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s
country of nationality.”193 As the executive order was linked to seven countries,
all with large Islamic majorities, the focus on minority religions excluded
Muslims while offering possible protection to Christian and Jewish refugees.194

In the ensuing lawsuits, several federal-district courts rapidly enjoined the
executive order.195 The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declined to grant
an emergency stay of a nationwide temporary-restraining order preventing the
implementation of the order issued by Judge Robart.196 The appellate court did so
by focusing on due process, and specifically reserved any issue of possible
violation of the Establishment Clause.197 Nonetheless, the court noted both the
claims presented “numerous statements by the President about his intent to
implement a ‘Muslim ban,’”1 9 8 and the Supreme Court precedent provided that

190. Id.  

191. Amy B. Wang, Trump asked for a ‘Muslim ban,’ Giuliani says — and ordered a

commission to do it ‘legally’, WASH. POST (Jan. 29, 2017), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/

the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/trump-asked-for-a-muslim-ban-giuliani-says-and-ordered-a-commission-to-

do-it-legally/?utm_term=.0dc5f9592351 [https://perma.cc/PE2Q-FXTU] (emphasis in original).

Later, Mayor Giuliani reversed course, denying that he had been involved in the crafting of the

executive order. See Olivia Beavers, Giuliani walks back claims of involvement in Trump’s travel

ban, THE HILL (May 23, 2017, 10:28 PM), http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/334869-

giuliani-walks-back-claims-of-involvement-in-trumps-travel-ban [https://perma.cc/V78K-EBBM]

(noting that the statement that he had “not participated in writing any of the Executive Orders on

that subject issued by the Trump administration,” came in an affidavit filed in an unrelated case

involving a Turkish client).

192. Exec. Order No. 13769, supra note 189. 

193. Id.

194. The countries were Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Wang, supra

note 191. Interestingly, the order does not mention them by name, referring instead to a statute, 8

U.S.C. § 1187(a)(12) (2018), which lists two of them (Iraq and Syria) and authorizes the Secretary

of Homeland Security to designate other areas of concern. Id.

195. Aziz v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-116, 2017 WL 465917, at *1 (E.D. Va. Feb. 3, 2017);

Washington v. Trump, No. C17-0141JLR, 2017 WL 1045950, at *2-3 (W.D. Wash. Feb. 3, 2017).

196. Washington v. Trump, 847 F.3d 1151, 1156 (9th Cir. 2017).

197. Id. at 1167-68.

198. Id. at 1167.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 335

“circumstantial evidence of intent, including the historical background of the
decision and statements by decisionmakers, may be considered in evaluating
whether a governmental action was motivated by a discriminatory purpose.”199

On March 6, 2017, the White House withdrew Executive Order 13769 and
replaced it.200 This second order was much like the first: again, it did not mention
Islam, although this time it did list the six affected nations—shortened now as
Iraq was moved out of the list as a “special case.”201 The requirement that
religious refugees come from a religious minority disappeared, and the only
mentions of religion at all occurred in a section insisting that the order’s
predecessor had not been “motivated by animus toward any religion.”202

As the Justice Department defended the second executive order against a
series of attacks, it demonstrated that it had fully committed to a regime of false
facts. Government briefs insisted the order created only a “temporary pause,” not
a ban, and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with religion.203 Unfortunately for
the Solicitor General, President Trump was less committed to these false facts
than the attorneys probably would have liked. While the attorneys insisted on
separating the campaign’s anti-Islamic promise and the executive order, the
president and his senior staff served as a sort of Greek chorus, denying the
statements made by the Muses of the Justice Department.204

For the courts, this was too much. Long-established precedents in the area of
racial discrimination in the Equal Protection context allowed courts to look to
extra-legal statements and contemporaneous events to determine the true purpose
behind seemingly neutral government actions.205 It was too easy for such courts
to listen to the words of the chorus centered on President Trump and to be
unwilling to accept the false facts elegantly offered by his counsel.

That series of events was disturbing. For it illustrated that a less impulsive

199. Id. at 1168 (citing Vill. of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252,

266–68 (1977)).

200. Exec. Order No. 13780, 82 Fed. Reg. 13,209 (Mar. 6, 2017) [hereinafter Exec. Order No.

13780].

201. Id. at 13,211-12.

202. Id. at 13,210.

203. Petition for Writ of Certiorari at 13, Trump v. Int’l Refugee Assistance Project, 137 S.

Ct. 2080 (2017) (No. 16-1436), 2017 WL 2391562 (arguing that the Order “applies to certain

nationals of the designated countries without regard to religion”).

204. Int’l Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, 241 F. Supp. 3d 539, 559 (D. Md. 2017)

(quoting Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller as noting that the distinction between the first and

second Orders were “mostly minor technical differences”). The President was even more explicit

at a rally, telling the crowd “[t]his is watered-down version of the first one. This is a watered-down

version . . . . And let me tell you something, I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all

the way (through the legal system), which is wanted I wanted to do in the first place.” Jacob

Pramuk, Trump may have just dealt a blow to his own executive order, CNBC (Mar. 15, 2017, 9:47

PM), https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/15/trump-may-have-just-dealt-a-blow-to-his-own-executive-

order.html [https://perma.cc/9FBR-SAUG].

205. Vill. of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 265-68 (1977).



336 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

and more-skillful presentation might have succeeded in effectuating precisely the
same ban. There is not that great a distance between accepting a bare cross, with
no sign as a symbol of World War I but not Christianity, and accepting a ban on
members of majority faiths from seven Islamic-majority countries as an action
with no relation to religion.

C. How the War Is Fought: Using False Facts to Create Mysterious Purposes

There have been many areas where the government has spoken in a religious
voice. In some, government actors seem to be deliberately learning from the
Muses: presenting false versions of the facts to reach the result—a declaration of
constitutionality—they desire. One such area is the teaching in public schools
about the origin and development of life. Many scholars have recounted the
contours of the century-long battle: from state laws that banned the teaching of
evolution,206 to a Supreme Court decision that prohibited those laws,207 to another
Supreme Court decision that invalidated a statute requiring equal time for
“creation science,”208 to  an ongoing fight over “intelligent design.” While there
are scholars who have defended intelligent design,209 and others who have
opposed it,210 it has been almost a decade since Professor Ravitch demonstrated
conclusively that Intelligent Design is less a scientific theory or methodology.21 1

As Ravitch showed, biologists seeking to explain the development of complex
life did not conduct the development of Intelligent Design; rather it arose from
the work of “philosophers, law professors and social scientists.”212 Their role was
critical, as they assembled the necessary language to transform the old project—
teaching religious creationism in public schools—into the new project.213 This

206. Scopes v. State, 289 S.W. 363, 367 (1927) (“We are not able to see how the prohibition

of teaching the theory that man has descended from a lower order of animals gives preference to

any religious establishment or mode of worship.”).

207. Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 107-09 (1968) (“No suggestion has been made that

Arkansas’ law may be justified by considerations of state policy other than the religious views of

some of its citizens. It is clear that fundamentalist sectarian conviction was and is the law’s reason

for existence.”).

208. See Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987).

209. See, e.g., Jana R. McCreary, This Is the Trap the Courts Built: Dealing with the

Entanglement of Religion and the Origin of Life in American Public Schools, 37 SW. U. L. REV. 1

(2008).

210. See, e.g., Peter Irons, Darwin, Dogma, and Definitions: A Reply to Professor McCreary,

37 SW. U. L. REV. 69 (2008).

211. Frank S. Ravitch, Playing the Proof Game: Intelligent Design and the Law, 113 PENN ST.

L. REV. 841 (2009).

212. Id. at 853.

213. Id. at 852 (“Early ID supporters read the language in Edwards and other cases and

realized that they had to take God out of their theory in order to get it into public schools and into

scientific discourse more generally. They also realized that they would need to do work that could,

at least plausibly, be called science and that they would need to gain acceptance for this work in



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 337

explains why Ravitch characterized Intelligent Design as a “marketing
strategy,”214 designed to secure legal acceptance of government-religious
speech.215 His characterization is evidenced by the words of many Intelligent
Design proponents, who deploy Muse-like false facts in support of their legal
mission.216

Another use of false facts to defend a legal conclusion happened in Kentucky
in the decade following the September 11th attacks. In 2002, the Kentucky
General Assembly restructured The Statewide Emergency Management
Programs.2 1 7 In so doing, it began with a series of findings, concluding that
government could not provide security alone, that citizen vigilance was critical,
and that “[t]he safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart
from reliance upon Almighty God.”218 To ensure that the employees of the office,
as well as vigilant citizens, knew about the conclusions of the legislature, a

the public’s eye.”) 

214. Id.

215. Id.  

216. Professor McCreary claimed, for example, that “[e]volution, in explaining the origin of

life, promotes the atheistic viewpoint.” Jana R. McCreary, Focusing Too Much on the Forest Might

Hide the Evolving Trees: A Response to Professor Irons, 37 SW. U. L. REV. 83, 87 (2008). Of

course, to do so, she had to simply ignore the vast community that subscribes to theistic evolution.

See Ravitch, supra note 211, at 843. But by doing so, she could shift the ground of defense for this

religious speech by the government to a demand for neutrality, in the tradition of Everson:

“[E]volution, as the explanation of the origin of life, is not religiously neutral; it promotes the

concept of the nonexistence of a higher power. Accordingly, we can either say nothing about it in

a public school system as an explanation of the origin of life, or we can share all theories equally.”

McCreary, supra 216, at 91. Indeed, because she concedes that “government cannot prefer one

religious view over another,” she must expound the extraordinary claim that “none of this asserts

that to believe in the intelligent design concept - that some higher power exists that guided the

origin of life - one must believe in the Christian God. The higher power could be one person’s

‘Mother Nature’ and another’s multiple gods and still another’s one god.” Id. at 94. Needless to say,

there is no evidence presented of Mother Nature cultists or polytheists being part of the movement

driving ID. Similar claims abound in the pro-ID literature. See, e.g., David K. DeWolf et al.,

Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover, 68 MONT. L. REV. 7, 29 (2007) (noting that “ID

merely seeks to infer ‘intelligent causes’ and is compatible with a wide variety of religious

viewpoints, including pantheism and agnosticism”). Some ID proponents eschew Professor

McCreary’s claim that evolution is inherently atheistic, arguing instead that it is compatible with

some versions of religion and thus teaching evolution violates neutrality by favoring those faiths.

See, e.g., Casey Luskin, Zeal for Darwin’s House Consumes Them: How Supporters of Evolution

Encourage Violations of the Establishment Clause, 3 LIBERTY U. L. REV. 403, 464 (2009)

(“Textbooks and other teaching activities that imply ‘a god of design and purpose is not necessary,’

or that praise the Pope’s acceptance of evolution . . . would cause students who accept ID or

creationism to feel like political outsiders, while causing students who hold theistic evolutionary

viewpoints to feel like insiders.”).

217. See KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 39A.285 (West 2002).

218. Id.



338 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

subsequent provision provided that the executive director of the Kentucky Office
of Homeland Security shall:

Publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence
on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth by
including the provisions of KRS 39A.285(3) in its agency training and
educational materials. The executive director shall also be responsible for
prominently displaying a permanent plaque at the entrance to the state’s
Emergency Operations Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3)[.]219

A group of individuals led by Michael Christerson, as well as American
Atheists, Inc., filed suit.220 The trial court held the American Atheists, Inc. had no
standing, but otherwise granted the plaintiffs’ requested relief.221 The trial court
held that the legislature’s decision to confirm the Commonwealth’s dependence
on God on every piece of training literature “created an official government
position on God,” had been enacted primarily for a religious purpose, and thus
failed the Lemon test.222

A divided Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed, finding that Kentucky’s
action was no more troubling than Ohio’s motto: “With God, All Things Are
Possible.”223 It characterized the action of the General Assembly as providing
only “lip service to a commonly held belief in the puissance of God.”224 It
claimed this fit well within the Supreme Court’s view of the Establishment
Clause, because “[i]n Van Orden, the Court noted that ‘[s]imply having religious
content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run
afoul of the Establishment Clause.’”225 Of course, there was no majority opinion
in Van Orden, and no conclusion can be drawn about the Texas Ten
Commandments monument without considering Justice Breyer’s words.226 His
defense of the monument, contained in a concurrence only in the result, relied
heavily on factors such as the placement of the monument to determine that “the
State itself intended the . . . nonreligious aspects of the tablets’ message to
predominate.”227 This fact, plus the weight Justice Breyer famously put on the
forty years that elapsed between installation and legal challenge,228 made Van
Orden a highly inappropriate justification for allowing the Kentucky Office of
Homeland Security to announce suddenly their reliance on divine support.

219. KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 39G.010(2)(a) (West 2013).

220. Ky. Office of Homeland Sec. v. Christerson, 371 S.W.3d 754, 756 (Ky. Ct. App. 2011).

221. Id. at 756-57.

222. See id. at 758.

223. Id. 

224. Id. at 759.

225. Id. at 757-58.

226. Chief Justice Rehnquist authored a four-justice plurality, and Justice Breyer concurred

only in the result. See Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005).

227. Id. at 701 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment).

228. Id. at 702 (“[A] further factor is determinative here. As far as I can tell, 40 years passed

in which the presence of this monument, legally speaking, went unchallenged . . . .”).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 339

Even aside from the legal objection based on Van Orden’s misuse, the
Kentucky Court of Appeals’ decision is troubling. Like legal defenders of
Intelligent Design, the majority in Christerson downplayed the religious
significance of the government proclamations: they were no more than a motto,
they were mere “lip service.”229 That characterization belies the way the General
Assembly treated the matter.

For the legislators did not mean merely to provide lip service to the divine
power of a non-specific faith. Instead, they sought to announce, with government
speech, their view of our constitutional structure. An amicus brief filed by virtual
all the members of the Kentucky House offered the following explanation of their
views:

There is a foundation of American law and civil government; an official
Canon, which includes at least four separate decisions of the United
States supreme [sic] Court. Each of these holdings confirms that the
United States is in law, fact, and history and should thus properly be
termed officially, a “Christian Nation” since the foundation of our laws
upon principles of the Ten Commandments and the Old and New
Testaments.230

Only by willfully looking past the declaration of 96 out of 100 state
representatives that they actively sought to establish the propriety of recognizing
the United States as a Christian Nation could the Kentucky Court of Appeals find
that a step toward that end did not violate the Establishment Clause. The court
accepted a version of the facts rejected by the very actors whose legislation it was
considering.

There are other settings that have not yet been subject to the tempering fire
of litigation, where the purposes are even more awkward. In at least two states,
the legislature has allowed public schools to begin the teaching day with a
recitation of the “traditional Lord’s prayer.”231 In response to the obvious

229. Christerson, 371 S.W.3d at 759.

230. Brief of Amicus Curiae Ninety-Six Kentucky State Representatives at 18, Ky. Office of

Homeland Sec. v. Christerson, 371 S.W.3d 754 (Ky. Ct. App. 2011) (No. 2009-CA-1650). Taking

a slightly different approach, 35 of Kentucky’s 38 State Senators joined a brief arguing that the law

at issue was not an establishment of religion any more than the Ohio motto was. See Brief of

Amicus Curiae Thirty-Five Kentucky State Senators at 9, Christerson, 371 S.W.3d 754 (No. 2009-

CA-1650). Perhaps unwilling to cede all opportunities for advocacy of a broader agenda, the legal

team representing the Senators, which included former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy

Moore, encouraged the appellate court to decide the case based on “the text of the First

Amendment, not judicially-fabricated tests.” Id. at 1. 

231. N.H. REV. STAT. ANN. § 194:15-a (2018); KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 158.175 (West 2018).

In New Hampshire, the State Senate requested the New Hampshire Supreme Court to opine on the

constitutionality of the proposed statute before enacting it. The justices, applying Lemon, opined

that the law would violate the Establishment Clause, although an amendment substituting a moment

of silence would not. Opinion of the Justices, 113 N.H. 297, 300-01 (1973). The legislature passed

it anyway, and it remains the (unchallenged) law of the Granite State. Kentucky followed suit by



340 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

objection that the “traditional Lord’s prayer” is a specific manifestation of
Christianity,232 the Kentucky legislature attempted to add context: “Pupils shall
be reminded that this Lord’s prayer is the prayer our pilgrim fathers recited when
they came to this country in their search for freedom.”233 This would seem to be
beside the point: the Lord’s Prayer may be “traditional,” but it is certainly
religious.234 Thus, the classrooms would be replicating the religious experience
of settlers who predated the Establishment Clause: this is far more a religious
exercise than a historical one, especially if it is repeated each day. Furthermore,
even this is a false fact, at least if the Kentucky legislators meant “pilgrims” to
refer to the separatists who landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. Their
faith required extemporaneousness, and rejected the rote pronouncements of the
Church of England. To the extent they used the “traditional Lord’s prayer,” it was
as a model for their own devotionals, not a script to be intoned in a group.235

The Lemon test would ask a court to determine whether any of this legislation
had a secular purpose. A common-sense glance would suggest the answer is no.
The clearest answer to a question of why God is invoked to protect a state agency,
why children should be taught inherently non-testable religious theories in a
science class, or a school day should begin with prayer first uttered at the
foundation of a religion two millennia ago, is that the religious sensibilities of the
body politic would thereby benefit. 

Of course, this is precisely the forbidden answer. It may, as logic suggests,
represent reality. But it may not, as the Lemon test demands, be uttered aloud as
a negotiating position. Therefore, official-legislative histories must be established
which will imply neither a solely religious purpose nor—in case any courts still
wishing to use an endorsement test—that the action will in any way make
people’s religious affiliations relevant to their standing in the political
community. Thus, Holy Warriors claim it is the “purpose” of teaching Intelligent
Design to offer “a scientific theory that differs from Darwin’s view, and is

adding a nearly identical provision a generation later, in 1996.

232. The “Lord’s Prayer,” or Pater Noster, is found in two slightly different versions in the

Christian Bible, and constitute the directive of Jesus Christ to his followers about how they should

pray. See Matthew 6:5-14 and Luke 11:2-4. Quoting the second-century Christian scholar

Tertullian, the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Lord’s Prayer “truly the summary of the

whole Gospel.” CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Pt. 4, Sect. 2, Art. I., available at

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9W.HTM [https://perma.cc/PE79-2ET3]. And, of

course, the Supreme Court has already rejected the use of this prayer as a way for public schools

to train their charges. See Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 205-06 (1963).

233. KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 158.175.

234. Schempp, 374 U.S. at 266-67 (Brennan, J., concurring) (“I would suppose that, if

anything, the Lord’s Prayer and the Holy Bible are more clearly sectarian, and the present

violations of the First Amendment consequently more serious” than the “rather bland Regents’

Prayer” the Court struck down in Engel v. Vitale.). 

235. See JAM ES P. MOORE, JR., ONE NATION UNDER GOD: THE HISTORY OF PRAYER IN

AMERICA 17 (2005). 



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 341

endorsed by a growing number of credible scientists.”236 Kentucky defended its
statutory requirement that its Homeland Security Department display a plaque
insisting that security “cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty
God”237 by noting it had a secular purpose of “protecting the Commonwealth
from all major hazards.”2 3 8 Remarkably, the same legislature had decided, when
it was in their Lemon-based interest to do so, that the justification for authorizing
public schools to conduct recitations of the “traditional” Lord’s Prayer was “the
freedom of religion symbolized by the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.”239 Of
course, if the actual motivation behind the government action was the promotion
of a popular religion, one would expect to see government officials saying quite
different things about these same actions when they sought the approval of the
voting public. Indeed, that has been a common practice, whatever the developers
of the legal strategies may have wished.240

The great insight of the legal-realism movement was that factors other than
abstract logic played a role in legal interpretation.241 Whether or not one
subscribes to the more extreme forms of legal realism as a matter of judicial
decisions,242 it is certainly a tool for understanding advocacy. Clients, participants
in an ongoing battle over the nature and extent of governmental-religious
behavior, are driven by their own non-analytical motivations. Advocates, whether
they represent Fervent Separationists or Holy Warriors, will thus construct facts
and apply tests in ways that seek their desired results. These constructed facts do
nothing to decrease religion-based political divisiveness. There are times when
“everyone knows” what is really happening.243 A legislator’s vote for a complex
appropriations bill may not really capture the legislator’s intent on any particular

236. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Sch. Dist., 400 F. Supp. 2d 707, 730 (M.D. Pa. 2005) (quoting

a newsletter sent by the school board to every residence in the district). 

237. Ky. Office of Homeland Sec. v. Christerson, 371 S.W.3d 754, 756 (Ky. Ct. App. 2011).

238. Brief in Opposition at 10, Am. Atheists, Inc. v. Ky. Office of Homeland Sec., 2013 WL

503398 (2013) (No. 12-613). 

239. KY. STAT. ANN. § 158.175(1) (West 2018); see also N.H. REV. STAT. ANN. § 194:15-a

(2018) (using similar language, but limiting the authorization to public elementary schools).

240. See, e.g., Kitzmiller, 400 F. Supp.2d at 728 (“[T]he Dover School Board advocated for

the curriculum change and disclaimer in expressly religious terms . . . .”).

241. Karl N. Llewellyn, Some Realism about Realism — Responding to Dean Pound, 44

HARV. L. REV. 1222, 1237 (1931) (listing as a common “point of departure” for those practicing

legal realism a “distrust of traditional rules (on the descriptive side)” accompanied by “a distrust

of the theory that traditional prescriptive rule-formulations are the heavily operative factor in

producing court decisions”) (emphasis in original). 

242. T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Constitutional Law in the Age of Balancing, 96 YALE L.J. 943,

955 (1987) (“The ‘ruleskepticism’ of some Realists denied that in any case ‘doubtful enough to

make litigation respectable,’ prevailing legal doctrine compelled an answer.”).

243. This formulation is rare, but not unheard of, in the law. See, e.g., Plessy v. Ferguson, 163

U.S. 537, 557 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting) (“Every one knows that the statute in question had its

origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks,

as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons.”).



342 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

item of spending. But that same person’s vote to install or remove a religious
monument, or inaugurate some other form of government-religious speech, may
capture the legislator’s heart’s desire.

D. The War Continues: Legislative Prayer

The battle has continued in the area of legislative prayer. Fervent
Separationists continue to battle against local practices that they fear are
theocratic; Holy Warriors continue to seek affirmations of faith in government
communication. It is worth recalling at this point that even the opening prayer of
the Town of Greece was not, in fact, a practice of accumulated age. The town,
established in 1822,244 only changed its practice from an opening moment of
silence to an opening prayer in 1999.245 

Two recent cases that divided circuits illustrate the persistent danger of false
facts and the nature of the holy war. In North Carolina, a group of citizens
challenged the practice of a county board offering prayers before public
meetings.246 Meanwhile, in Michigan, a self-proclaimed Pagan named Peter Carl
Bormuth began a pro se battle against another county board for a seemingly
similar practice.247 The en banc Fourth Circuit found the former conduct
unconstitutional, but the en banc Sixth Circuit had no objection to the latter.248

Both battles clearly stemmed from the chaos that was the Town of Greece
decision, but the difference in the results offers a troubling sign about the reality
of these conflicts. It may also suggest that yet another possible intervention by the
Supreme Court may be in the future.

In both cases, the facial similarity to Greece, New York ended at the identity
of the prayer leader. For both Rowan County, North Carolina, and Jackson
County, Michigan, opted to have their elected officials lead the prayers, rather
than hiring a permanent chaplain like Marsh or seeking community volunteers
like Town of Greece.249 The prayers were overwhelmingly—possibly
completely—Christian in nature.25 0 Both asked members of the public to stand,
bow their heads, or both.251 Neither county allowed anyone other than the elected
officials to offer prayers, and both followed the prayers with a recitation of the

244. Visitors, TOWN OF GREECE, https://www.greeceny.gov/visitors [https://perma.cc/5SWV-

MFYQ] (last visited May 25, 2018) (“Its name was chosen because of the current wave of

sympathy toward the Greeks who were then fighting for independence from Turkish rule.”).

245. Town of Greece v. Galloway, 134 S. Ct. 1811, 1816 (2014).

246. Lund v. Rowan Cty., 863 F.3d 268, 271-72 (4th Cir. 2017).

247. Bormuth v. Cty. of Jackson, 870 F.3d 494, 498-99 (6th Cir. 2017).

248.  Lund, 863 F.3d at 272; Bormuth, 870 F.3d at 498. 

249. Lund, 863 F.3d at 272; Bormuth, 870 F.3d at 498.

250. Lund, 863 F.3d at 273 (“97% of the Board’s prayers mentioned ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ,’ or the

‘Savior.’”); Bormuth, 863 F.3d at 498, 509 (acknowledging that the prayers are “generally Christian

in tone,” and rejecting, on legal grounds, Bormuth’s argument that “[b]ecause each Commissioner

is Christian . . . , every prayer offered has been Christian”).

251. Lund, 863 F.3d at 272; Bormuth, 870 F.3d at 498.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 343

Pledge of Allegiance.252

In rejecting Rowan County’s practice, the Fourth Circuit focused on the
traditional constitutional goal of religious neutrality.253 The dissent, on the other
hand, found the county’s practices to be factually indistinguishable from those at
issue in Town of Greece.254 Thus, both sides of the dispute deployed the Supreme
Court’s opinion for their own purposes. The majority relied on the sweeping legal
principles and the inaccurate portrayal of the facts in the case to find the North
Carolina county was proceeding in a very different way from the town in New
York. The dissenters looked at the record’s facts and found little relevant
difference.

The sides were reversed, but the game was the same in the Sixth Circuit.
There, the court focused on the neutrality of the system and the fact that each
commissioner constructed an invocation based only “on the dictates of his own
conscience.”255 For the majority, it was important that there was no official-
government policy or oversight; each commissioner could say whatever he or she
chose, and the fact that the prayers were Christian was merely coincidental.256 The
court noted that even if the prayers seemed overtly Christian, they fell “within the
religious idiom accepted by our Founders.”257 By focusing on this history, the
majority found the Jackson County practice well within the limits of Marsh and
Town of Greece. In response, the dissent focused precisely on the uniformity of
belief,258 arguing it violated the broader language of neutrality in Town of

252. Lund, 863 F.3d at 272; Bormuth, 870 F.3d at 498.

253. Lund, 863 F.3d at 275 (“[T]he Framers sought to prevent government from choosing sides

on matters of faith and to protect religious minorities from exclusion or punishment at the hands

of the state.”). See id. at 292 (Motz, J., concurring) (“[T]he Court concluded that no other features

of the town’s rotating system of volunteer chaplains, all recruited in a non-discriminatory manner

from local congregations, advanced one religion to the exclusion of others.”).

254. Id. at 316 (Agee, J., dissenting) (“[T]he prayers actually offered in Marsh and Town of

Greece contained the same sort of pleas to the Christian God and to Jesus Christ, the same

recognition of a Christian tenet of salvation and dependence on God’s favor, and the same

generalized exhortations to obedience to Christian teachings as those prayers singled out for

concern by the majority.”).

255. Bormuth, 870 F.3d at 498.

256. Id. (noting that “each elected Jackson County Commissioner, regardless of his religion

(or lack thereof), is afforded an opportunity to open a session”).

257. Id. at 512. This sort of analysis, of course, takes no account of the fact that every

significant player in the early Republic was at least nominally Christian; the United States did not

have its first Jewish members of the House and Senate until more than fifty years had passed. See,

e.g., David Levy Yulee, JEWISH VIRTUAL LIBR., https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/david-levy-

yulee [https://perma.cc/EKW4-ANKJ] (last visited May 25, 2018); Lewis Charles Levin, JEWISH

VIRTUAL LIBR., https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lewis-charles-levin [https://perma.cc/B5J7-

M36J] (last visited May 25, 2018).

258. Bormuth, 870 F.3d at 529 (citing district court’s finding that the invocations were

“exclusively Christian”).



344 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

Greece.259

In both cases, combatants in this battle deployed arguments gleaned from the
Supreme Court’s futile attempts to bring resolution to the holy war. In each case,
though, a more troubling reality played out in the communities involved, one only
partially apparent in the legal cases. In Rowan County, North Carolina, the
religious war was overtly taken to the ballot box. When the local chapter of the
American Civil Liberties Union informed the board of their concerns with
sectarian prayer, members of the board announced their defiance and promised
to continue the government’s Christian speech.260 After the initiation of the
lawsuit, the next elections saw two incumbents favor continuing the Christian
prayer and two challengers opposing it; both incumbents won.261 The specter that
minority religions can only have equality once they achieve electoral superiority
is precisely the concern with leaving such matters to the ballot box that animated
what is, in my view, the most important footnote in U.S. Supreme Court
history.262 The court’s majority expressed the fear that not being a Christian in
Rowan County would be a “tacit political debit, which in turn deters those of
minority faiths from seeking office.”263

A similar dynamic was at work in Jackson County, Michigan. There the
court’s majority took solace in the electoral possibilities for religious minorities,
because although the court purported not to know the religions of the board, “we
do know that Commissioners of different faiths, or no faith, may be elected.”264

This optimistic view of electoral reality was denied by an extensive amount of
video evidence.265 The Jackson County board posted recordings of their meetings
on YouTube, and as the dissent noted, those videos paint a different picture.266

The videos show a board specifically rejecting the Greece, New York approach
of allowing non-board members to give invocations, because people might get
online ordinations and then “we are going to create a lot of problems here when
certain people come up . . . and say things that [people are] not going to like.”267

In an even more dramatic demonstration of the invocation’s real purpose, the
videos reveal that the board used prayers to open every meeting except one: the

259. Id. at 526 (“Town of Greece demands that courts distinguish solemn, respectful practices

from practices that ‘denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach

conversion.’”) (citation omitted). 

260. Lund v. Rowan Cty., 863 F.3d 268, 273 (2017) (“[A]sking for guidance for my decisions

from Jesus,” one commissioner explained, “is the best I, and Rowan County, can ever hope for.”).

261. Id. at 282.

262. United States v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144, 153-54 n.4 (1938) (“[P]rejudice against

discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the

operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon . . . .”).

263. Lund, 863 F.3d at 282.

264. Bormuth, 870 F.3d at 513.

265. See id. at 529-32 (Moore, J., dissenting).

266. See generally id. (discussing YouTube postings).   

267. Id. at 538 (Moore, J., dissenting).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 345

one that was held without any member of the public being present.268 One could
discount the troubling evidence of the videos because of the other important
dispute between the majority and the dissent: whether the court even had
authority to hear them, or whether they were not properly part of the record.269

One might hope that if the court had evidence before it showing that the
government adopted a specific policy precisely to keep from having to hear non-
Christian invocations, they would not have found it constitutionally permitted.270

Any such solace is denied by a chilling footnote in which the majority announces
that if the court had considered the videos their decision would have been the
same.271

The linkage between religious and political standing in the community
against which Justice O’Connor had warned seems to have been deliberately
pursued in both counties in the way in which they structured their opening
ceremonies. By immediately following the prayer, where people were asked to
stand, with the Pledge of Allegiance, where they also stood, the boards and the
spectators could immediately discover who was physically unable to stand and
who did not stand for the prayer because they objected on religious grounds. The
reaction of the board and the public to Peter Carl Bormuth illustrates the political
weakness of a member of a minority faith in such a setting.272

E. The War Continues: Monuments

One might have thought that direct Supreme Court consideration of
monumental-religious speech would end at least that particular battle. The 2004
term ought to have been a watershed in this story. By taking two displays of the
Ten Commandments under consideration,273 the Court might well have hoped to
come to some resolution intelligible enough to be deployed by lower courts and
followed by political branches. Indeed, the cases looked teed-up for any number
of possible resolutions: the Kentucky display was new and inside a court house;274

the Texas display was much older and outdoors, in a park-like setting near the
capital.275 The Kentucky display had been the subject of changes and amendments
throughout its brief but dramatic life,276 while the Texas monument had been

268. Id. at 530.

269. Compare id. at 500 (majority opinion), with id. at 529-30 (Moore, J., dissenting).

270. See id. at 544 (Moore, J., dissenting) (“[T]he Jackson County Board of Commissioners

affirmatively excluded non-Christian prayer givers, and did so in an effort to control the content

of prayers.”).

271. Id. at 501 n.2 (majority opinion).

272. Id. at 518 (finding that members of the board turning their backs on Bormuth while he

spoke was a reaction to his antagonism toward them and not his religious beliefs).

273. See Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005); McCreary Cty. v. Am. Civil Liberties

Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844 (2005). 

274. McCreary, 545 U.S. at 851.

275. Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 681-82.

276. See McCreary, 545 U.S. at 851-58.



346 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

legally uninteresting for decades.277

Because the Court fractured278 and neither effective majority was willing to
accept the other’s characterization of the Constitution requirements at issue,279 no
intelligible principle emerged. Instead, Holy Warriors and Fervent Separationists
gained a fresh set of opinions to deploy. For example, many communities have
sought to install large, outdoor monuments to the Ten Commandments.280 In
doing so, they have sought the protection of the opinions in Van Orden that saved
Austin’s monument. The five-justice majority allowing it to stand, though, only
existed because of the Justice Breyer’s concurrence in the judgment,281 an opinion
that focused on the age and banal history of the monument in question. When
installing a new monument, especially over the opposition of dedicated
separationists, such factors would cut against the monument’s constitutionality.
Thus, advocates for new monuments simply focus on other parts of the opinions,
and even go so far as to emphasize “facts” that seem to vary from reality.

What is perhaps even more surprising—Austin’s monument remained, after
all—is the number of communities that have sought to erect indoor displays of
the Ten Commandments the Court rejected in McCreary County. Because the
majority opinion focused on the complex history spanning the displays before the
county had settled on the “Foundations of American Law and Government”282

collection, other governmental bodies have simply jumped to the third display.
Statutes authorizing these displays proudly declare their purpose to be historical
and educational.283 Some then simply declare as a matter of law the contentious
proposition that the Ten Commandments are a fundamental part of the American

277. Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 682.

278. Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005), consisted of a plurality opinion, two

concurrences, a concurrence in the judgment, and three dissents. McCreary County v. American

Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, 545 U.S. 844 (2005), contained a majority opinion, a

concurrence, and a dissent.

279. It is not vain to hope the Supreme Court will operate this way. With the same members,

the Court decided the two University of Michigan cases in the 2002 term by doing precisely this.

Although only Justice O’Connor was fully in the majority of both opinions, the case rejecting the

affirmative-action program of the undergraduate college specifically recognized the holding of the

case involving the law school. Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 268 (2003) (rejecting the argument

that diversity in higher education could not constitute a compelling interest for Equal Protection

analysis because “for the reasons set forth today in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court has rejected these

arguments”) (citation omitted).

280. See infra Part IV.B.

281. See infra Part IV.A.

282. I admit to having no evidence for this, but I have always suspected that the display was

named in error. Shifting the words to “Foundations of Law and American Government,” after all,

yields the uplifting acronym FLAG.

283. See, e.g., GA. CODE ANN. § 20-3-41.3 (West 2018) (citing “a need to educate and inform

the public about the history and background of American law” and maintaining that “public

buildings of this state are an ideal forum in which to display educational and informational

material”); S.C. CODE ANN. § 10-1-168 (2018).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 347

legal tradition.284 Courts have given this technique their stamp of approval.285

But the battle has not been one-sided, as the separationists have continued to
file suit. Indeed, there have been challenges to outdoor constructions virtually
indistinguishable from the Van Orden monument.286 Although no explosive
demolitions have yet been ordered for such monuments, courts have ordered
some monuments moved.287 With the increased religious divisiveness in the area
as well as with litigation expenses, communities are paying the price for the
unclear Supreme Court doctrine.288

F. Consequences of the War in a Nation with a Diverse Population

A response to the use of false facts might still be a sigh of satisfaction.
Objections to the metaphorical wall between church and state have the best of
pedigrees.289 If strict separation was never a desired outcome, what gives the
unelected judiciary the authority to limit the peoples’ desire to have their
representatives speak in the terms of faith? How is an inherently secular
government better for the United States than one that reflects the wishes of the
voters?

This idea triggered Justice O’Connor’s powerful warning offered in one of
her last opinions before retirement. Reviewing this argument, she noted that “we
do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.”290 She also examined
the world stage, noting the prevalence and intensity of faith-based struggle in
nations where governments wielded religious power, and rhetorically asked those
who wished more government-religious speech to answer the question: “Why
would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others

284. GA. CODE ANN. § 20-3-41.3 (“The Ten Commandments provide the moral background

of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of our legal tradition.”).

285. See, e.g., Am. Civil Liberties Union of Ky. v. Mercer Cty., 432 F.3d 624, 631 (6th Cir.

2005).

286. See, e.g., Red River Freethinkers v. City of Fargo, 764 F.3d 948, 949 (8th Cir. 2014).

287. See, e.g., Felix v. City of Bloomfield, 841 F.3d 848 (10th Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 2017

WL 2972650 (U.S. Oct. 16, 2017) (No. 17-60). A local newspaper reported the city would have to

work with the owner of the monument to relocate it. Hannah Grover, U.S. Supreme Court declines

Ten Commandments case, FARMINGTON DAILY TIMES (Oct. 16, 2017, 11:46 AM),

http://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/bloomfield/2017/10/16/u-s-supreme-court-declines-

bloomfield-ten-commandments-case/768088001/ [https://perma.cc/RP67-ZNY8].

288. See, e.g., Bill Estep, Pulaski pays $230,000 in Fees in 10 Commandments case,

LEXINGTON HERALD LEADER (Sep. 10, 2011, 3:52 AM), http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/

crime/article44125044.html [https://perma.cc/AH2V-ZGAN] (noting the county had to take out a

loan to pay the ACLU’s legal fees).

289. See, e.g., Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 107 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (“The

‘wall of separation between church and State’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor

which has proved useless as a guide to judging.”).

290. McCreary Cty. v. Am. Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 884 (2005).



348 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

so poorly?”291

The notion that the erection of a monument could cause the U.S. to undergo
the kind of violence seen in places like Iraq and the Philippines seems far-
fetched.2 9 2 It is nonetheless true that even in the United States, real political
hostility has arisen from religious controversies.293 Any increasing intensification
of political tension over religion is insoluble as faith matters cannot be resolved
through voting. An election can determine the tax rate for the support of libraries
or the availability of medical marijuana, but an election can never determine
which religion is “right” for a state or community. There is no reason for
nonbelievers to accept such an outcome as legitimate.

The inevitable result of such votes for monuments or prayers, then, is to
install the area’s majority faith without doing anything to convince members of
minority faiths—or those with no faith at all—that they are included. The
common-sense observation that the majority will protect its own faith practices
accounts for the fact that the baseline setting of rules will incorporate the
practices of the majority faith.294 This unintentional ignoring of minority religions
has long been true,295 but the potential for harm has become more acute as the
number of faiths and the increase in atheism have combined to make America

291. Id. at 882.

292. See, e.g., Rod Nordland & Suadad Al-Salhy, In Iraq’s Sectarian Violence, a Show of

Each Side’s Worst, N.Y. TIMES (June 23, 2014), https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/

w o r ld / m id d le e a s t / in -ir a q s -s e c t a r i a n - v i o l e n c e - a - s h o w - o f - e a c h -s id e s -w o r s t . h t m l

[https://perma.cc/98MY-YJ77]; Oliver Holmes, Philippine sectarian bloodshed unites Muslims and

Christians, GUARDIAN (June 3, 2017, 6:00 AM), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/

jun/03/philippine-sectarian-bloodshed-unites-muslims-and-christians [https://perma.cc/SFV4-

U7SQ].

293. See, e.g., Daniel Gordon, Into the “Breyer” Patch: Religious Division and the

Establishment Clause, 4 RUTGERS J.L. & RELIGION 3 (2002).

294. See, e.g., Goldman v. Weinberger, 475 U.S. 503 (1986). Captain Goldman, an Orthodox

Jewish officer in the Air Force, was forbidden by military uniform regulations from wearing his

yarmulke indoors. Id. The Court held that the Air Force had regulated even-handedly by drawing

a line based on the visibility of religious items. Id. But as a dissent noted, mainstream Christianity

did not require the wear of visible items of faith, which meant it had a built-in preference under the

regulation. Id. at 521 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (noting that “under the guise of neutrality and

evenhandedness, majority religions are favored over distinctive minority faiths”). For a detailed

look at the extraordinary story behind the case, “which differs in significant respects from the

official version of both the facts of the case and the ensuing litigation,” see Samuel J. Levine,

Untold Stories of Goldman v. Weinberger: Religious Freedom Confronts Military Uniformity, 66

A.F. L. REV. 205, 207 (2010).

295. See, e.g., Samuel J. Levine, A Look at the Establishment Clause Through the Prism of

Religious Perspectives: Religious Majorities, Religious Minorities, and Nonbelievers, 87 CHI.-

KENT L. REV. 775, 808 (2012) (noting some “latent majoritarian religious perspectives that

continue to characterize the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence”). For an

example of the perspective Professor Levine warns of, see, e.g., McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S.

420, 422 (1961). 



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 349

much more pluralistic than it was at the founding.

IV. A TRUE WAY OUT: STANDING

The overarching lesson of the integration of false facts into the many tests of
the Establishment Clause is that no test will ever be advocate-proof. No test will
be beyond manipulation by those seeking a particular result for committed clients.
Plessy’s abhorrent “separate but equal” standard itself was one of the most vital
tools in the dismantling of the enforced-segregation regime of Jim Crow that had
been given the imprimatur of constitutionality by Plessy.296 Any new test for the
Establishment Clause will merely become a tool for both sides in the ongoing
holy war to further their own agenda.

If peace is truly desirable, the current solution is no solution. The Court’s
practice of revising facts merely provides ammunition for committed advocates
struggling in an unwinnable conflict. The protracted struggle is itself a cause for
alarm and a threat to the stability of the republic. This is no new observation:
George Washington may have favored the idea of a tax to support churches in his
native Virginia, but observed that the bill should not pass because the opposition
to it would “rankle and perhaps convulse the State.”297 Perhaps making things
worse, some scholars have noted that the Supreme Court seems to be reducing the
role of the Establishment Clause298 and then withdrawing from the field of
battle.299 This is more troubling in this area than it would be in others, because of
a quantifiably odd feature of lower courts and the religion clauses: the political
nature of the decisions. In a thorough study of lower-court decisions, Professors
Sisk and Heise found that identifying the political party of the president who
appointed a particular judge is “quite valid in the study of Establishment Clause
decisions in the lower federal courts, indeed more of a surrogate than a mere
proxy.”300 If the authors are right that the current doctrine leaves lower-court
judges essentially unconstrained, and thus deciding cases on the basis of

296. See, e.g., Leland Ware & Melva Ware, Plessy’s Legacy: Desegregating the Eurocentric

Curriculum, 12 GA. ST. U. L. REV. 1151, 1154 (1996); Taunya Lovell Banks, Brown at 50:

Reconstructing Brown’s Promise, 44 WASHBURN L.J. 31, 36-40 (2004).

297. Joel H. Swift, To Insure Domestic Tranquility: The Establishment Clause of the First

Amendment, 16 HOFSTRA L. REV. 473, 495 (1988).

298. A. E. Dick Howard, The Changing Face of the Supreme Court, 101 VA. L. REV. 231, 234

(2015) (“Where the Warren Court set out to build a strict wall of separation between church and

state, the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts have begun steadily to dismantle that wall.”).

299. Marc O. DeGirolami, Constitutional Contraction: Religion and the Roberts Court, 26

STAN. L. & POL’Y REV. 385, 388-89 (2015) (noting that the Roberts Court “has agreed to hear fewer

constitutional challenges implicating the religion clauses than its predecessors: counting

generously, it has heard seven such cases, while over a comparable period (1995-2005) the

Rehnquist Court heard eleven cases bringing religion clause challenges and the Burger Court

(1976-1986) heard a whopping twenty-seven cases”).

300. Gregory C. Sisk & Michael Heise, Ideology “All the Way Down”? An Empirical Study

of Establishment Clause Decisions in the Federal Courts, 110 MICH. L. REV. 1201, 1239 (2012). 



350 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

“preexisting party-correlated attitude,”301 what is necessary is greater doctrinal
clarity, not less.302

Those who believe that faith-fueled conflict is bad need to seek ways to
remove the tension. That can only be done once the war is recognized as
inherently unwinnable. Once society decides that some members will never be
happy with any separation between their faith and the government, and other
members will be equally unsatisfied with any acknowledgement of the
supernatural, recognition will come that the war must be ended.303 As Chief
Justice Roberts noted in a different context, the best way to end something is to
end it.3 0 4 Fortunately, a way exists within the structure of American law to
significantly decrease, if not entirely end, the battles over government-religious
speech: the standing doctrine.

Courts can—and have—used standing to call the whole thing off. There are
already different rules for standing in different areas of law and different types
of controversies. As Professor Richard H. Fallon, Jr., has eloquently
demonstrated, standing’s fragmentation “nowhere manifests itself more visibly
than in suits to enforce the Establishment Clause.”305 In these conflicts, and in
these conflicts alone, the courts treat as actual injury the kind of psychic
unhappiness that is used as a model for non-injury in other contexts.306

One possible remedy to the standing problem is simply to align it to the rest
of constitutional law: without actual injury more severe than psychological
discomfort, no plaintiff would have standing. Such an approach would achieve

301. Id. at 1240.

302. Id. at 1263 (noting that the Court has offered many tests in a way that “invites even the

most conscientious of judges to draw deeply on personal reactions to religious symbols and political

attitudes” and calling the whole area “an attractive nuisance for political judging”).

303. Many scholars have advocated solutions for peace, but there is little evidence that both

sides will accept them. Professor Segall, for example, has suggested that moments of silence offer

the same solemnizing benefit frequently offered as the non-religious purpose for prayer. See Eric

J. Segall, Mired in the Marsh: Legislative Prayers, Moments of Silence, and the Establishment

Clause, 63 U. MIAMI L. REV. 713, 737-39 (2009). 

304. Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 748 (2007)

(“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of

race.”).

305. See Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Fragmentation of Standing, 93 TEX. L. REV. 1061, 1071

(2015). 

306. Id. at 1073-74 (noting that when facing challenges to Ten Commandments monuments

or nativity displays “the Court has historically treated standing as largely unproblematic. More

specifically, it proceeded directly to the merits, without pausing to conduct a standing inquiry”).

Elsewhere, it is uncontroversial that psychological grievances simply do not constitute the kind of

injury-in-fact necessary to convey standing. See, e.g., Depuy, Inc., v. Zimmer Holdings, Inc., 384

F. Supp. 2d 1237, 1240 (N.D. Ill. 2005) (“[T]here is a sense in which I am ‘injured’ when I become

upset by reading about the damage caused that fine old vineyard in Burgundy by a band of

marauding teetotalers, yet that injury would not be an injury to the kind of personal interest that is

necessary to support an invocation of the federal judicial power . . . .”).



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 351

the long-running view of multiple administrations that one commentator
described wryly as “the institutional interest of the United States in No One Ever
Having Standing.”30 7 This would certainly bring consistency to the area, but it is
not at all logically compelled.308 For although Justice Scalia might dismiss
objections to symbols as no more than personal taste, those who study human
understanding have found much more power in symbols. Professor Claudia Haupt
noted that recent scientific studies using brain-monitoring equipment confirmed
the much older observation that pictures speak more loudly than words.309 She
concludes that “characterizing religious symbols as passive is descriptively
inaccurate, doctrinally incoherent, and analytically unsound.”310 

The elimination of the recognition of psychological harm would also
constitute a complete and total victory for one group of combatants in this holy
war. For with no courts to referee disputes over government-religious
speech—and if no one has standing —the only check on increased government
speech is the use of the vote. The inevitable result would be increasingly sectarian
expression by the government.311 Although the United States has become more
pluralistic in matters of religion, there is no question that we remain a
predominantly Christian society, one in which almost all elected presidents have
professed Christianity, only one has professed to Catholicism.312 Requiring actual
injury to mean, in the case of a monument, what it means in most other contexts
means a local majority could, with impunity, install a proclamation on the
courthouse that reads: “We acknowledge the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on

307. John P. Elwood, What Were They Thinking: The Supreme Court in Revue, October Term

2008, 12 GREEN BAG 2D 429, 448 (2009).

308. For a defense of the concept that psychological injury, in the current era, can constitute

real injury, see Seth F. Kreimer, “Spooky Action at a Distance”: Intangible Injury in Fact in the

Information Age, 18 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 745, 787 (2016) (“Messages are received in common by

all who encounter them, and the harm suffered becomes more and more ‘direct’ as the internet

facilitates virtual presence.”). 

309. Claudia E. Haupt, Active Symbols, 55 B.C. L. REV. 821, 822, 848 (2014) (“[T]his fMRI

research confirms earlier findings of traditional psychological research that pictures have a closer

connection to emotion than words . . . .”).

310. Id. at 822. No Fervent Separationist, Professor Haupt concludes that some religious

symbols, such as crosses in buildings, flags, or coats of arms, nonetheless do not violate the

Establishment Clause because they “have low communicative impact.” Id. at 869.

311. Remember that all but four of Kentucky’s state representatives wrote to a court their

opinion that the United States should be recognized as a “Christian Nation.” See supra note 230 and

accompanying text. 

312. See David Masci, Almost all U.S. presidents, including Trump, have been Christians, PEW

RES. CTR. (Jan. 20, 2017), http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/20/almost-all-presidents-

have-been-christians/ [https://perma.cc/HEZ5-FDCS]. Many citizens apply a religious test in the

voting booth. See Goldsmith & Dillon, supra note 62, at 450 (“According to Gallup polling data,

49% of respondents in 2011 would refuse to vote for their party’s nominee for president if that

person were an atheist, making ‘atheist’ by far the most distrusted category.”).



352 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

the cross.”313 Indeed, as Professor Lund has pointed out, leaving protection of
religion to the vote is particularly dangerous because although America as a
whole has become more diverse religiously, there is still a great deal of
homogeneity of faith at the local level.3 1 4 It takes a special amount of courage for
a member of tiny minority to speak out against an overwhelming majority, even
when the Constitution would protect them.315

A. Justice Breyer’s Unaccepted Offer

An approach to seeking peace appeared in Justice Breyer’s concurrence in the
judgment in Van Orden.316 Careful to join none of the “Lemon is bad” language
of the plurality, Justice Breyer focused instead on the need to prevent religious
turmoil from worsening. His opinion therefore focused on the innocuous nature
of the Austin monument: its passivity, context, and tepid community reaction for
many years.317 He noted that unlike the religious civil war playing out in the two
Kentucky counties, the Texas monument had been ignored legally for four
decades.318

Both the majority and the dissent rejected this view as illogical. Some
scholars have agreed that it is not sound, among them Professor Laycock, who
characterized the reason given as “extraordinarily naïve.”3 1 9 Of course, the critics
are logically correct. As a test, allowing old things to remain and banning new
things is indefensible as a matter of consistency. In the already-illogical area of
standing, however, such a test would fit perfectly. Creating a rule that allowed
plaintiffs standing to challenge new forms of government-religious speech and
not old ones would allow the ACLU to challenge the FLAG displays in Kentucky
but bar Thomas Van Orden from suing to remove the Texas monument.320 This
simple standing rule would accomplish the same results as the collective nine
opinions in the two 2005 Ten Commandments cases, without serving as litigation
fodder for the continuing religious struggle.

313. Town of Greece v Galloway, 134 S. Ct. 1811, 1816 (2014) (quoting one of the prayers

offered in the Town of Greece case).

314. Lund, supra note 151, at 49. 

315. Laycock, supra note 80, at 1224 (noting that the anonymous plaintiffs in Santa Fe v. Doe

were discovered, they received death threats, and their dog was killed). This can even affect

attorneys; Professor Laycock continues by noting he wished to represent Van Orden while teaching

at the University of Texas in Austin, but feared that the University would be harmed, and “[he]

thought [he] had a conflicting fiduciary duty.” Id. at 1226.

316. See Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 698 (2005) (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment).

317. Id. at 701-02.

318. Id. at 702-03.

319. Laycock, supra note 80, at 1223.

320. Indeed, Professor Laycock suggested that “a grandfather clause, or a rule of laches that

applies to all potential plaintiffs as a class and does not start anew with each generation” would be

a better way of solving the problem of displays of the sort at issue in Van Orden. Id.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 353

B. The Tenth Circuit’s Approach

Indeed, it is possible that some lower courts are adopting this approach
surreptitiously as a means of resolving the matter. The Ten Commandments
monument of Stigler, Oklahoma, may provide an example of this.321 The
monument is somewhat unusual in that it did not follow the aesthetic conventions
of the Ten Commandments monuments placed around the nation by the Fraternal
Order of the Eagles and at issue in Van Orden.322 Like the Austin monument,
though, the Stigler version was set amid other remembrances, including tributes
to veterans of America’s wars and a pair of benches dedicated to high-school
graduating classes from the 1950s.323

The monument’s story fits well within the understanding of the players in
these dramas noted throughout this Article. The motive force was a Holy Warrior,
a local part-time minister who felt a religious calling to erect the monuments on
the courthouse lawn;324 the County Attorney, probably recognizing the potential
danger of government-religious speech even before the two 2005 cases, noted that
there might be “a few legal ‘bumps’”;325 the elected officials who approved the
monument spoke of it, for a time, in distinctly religious terms;326 and a group of
Fervent Separationists sued the County, demanding the monument’s removal.327

After a two-day trial, and in an opinion of unquestionable literary merit and
charm, the District Court rejected the demand.328 The Court, while focusing on
superficial similarities of the Austin and Stigler monuments (such as being
outside, being part of a collection of monuments, and having been donated by a
private citizen), also made the astonishing conclusion that “the Commissioners’
desire to accommodate Bush’s display for its historical value was genuine.”329

Indeed, the Court participated in the creation of false facts, praising the difficult-
to-justify claim of two commissioners that the monument served to remind “the
public of ‘what we came here for,’ i.e., to escape governmental religious
persecution.”330 It did so while downplaying the testimony of one of the same

321. See Green v. Haskell Cty. Bd. of Comm’rs, 568 F.3d 784 (10th Cir. 2009).

322. The monument contained the Ten Commandments on one side and the Mayflower

Compact on the other, perhaps attempting to protect the Commandments with a gloss of American

history. The monument was also unusual in that it contained a misspelling; it announced that the

Seventh Commandment prohibited “adultry.” Id. at 789.

323. Id.

324. Id. at 790 (quoting the citizen behind the effort telling the board that “the Lord had

burdened [his] heart”).

325. Id.

326. Id. at 792. (quoting one commissioner as referring to the monument by saying “[t]he good

Lord died for me. I can stand for him, and I’m going to . . . . I’m a Christian and I believe in this.

I think it’s a benefit to the community”).

327. Id.

328. Green v. Board of County Comm’rs, 450 F. Supp. 2d 1273, 1296-97 (E.D. Okla. 2006).

329. Id. at 1289 (emphasis added).

330. Id. at 1281. There is not a word in the Ten Commandments that speaks to a notion of



354 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

commissioners that he “does not believe in the separation of church and state.”331

In reversing, the Tenth Circuit applied the test from Lemon, “with Justice
O’Connor’s endorsement patina."33 2 The court emphasized the very evidence of
government-religious behavior downplayed by the district court.333 Because the
appellate court also emphasized the current nature of the conflict caused by the
government’s behavior, it endeavored to remove the current source of conflict
without providing incentives or tools to separationists to seek the removal of
other, older monuments.334 The focus on the timing of the challenge, and the
board’s response to it, suggests the possibility of using a parallel to the standing
requirement to draw the line where Justice Breyer had hinted. Unfortunately,
because the Tenth Circuit reached the importance of timing through endorsement,
rather than directly as a part of the standing inquiry, it remains subject to the
limitation of courts and justices that simply refuse to recognize the endorsement
test, whether as an independent matter or as a gloss on Lemon.335

A second case, arising in Bloomfield, New Mexico, offered another example
of the continuing war.336 The Circuit Court rejected the Ten Commandments
monument recently placed on the lawn of city hall because the “apparent purpose
and context of the Monument’s installation would give an objective observer the
impression of official religious endorsement.”337 This was an unsurprising use of
the Lemon test with the endorsement gloss. If anything was surprising about the

religious freedom. And although the journey of the Pilgrims has been an iconic shorthand for such

freedom, the Compact itself pledges the parties to create “a civil body politic” “for the glory of

God, and advancement of the Christian faith” and promises “all due submission and obedience” to

the laws created for such purposes. Id. at 1278. It is difficult to find in those words a paean to

religious freedom from government.

331. Id. at 1283 (crediting the commissioner’s subsequent explanation that he objected to court

decisions that had made the doctrine more strict than necessary).

332. Green, 568 F.3d at 796.

333. Id. at 800-04 (emphasizing the small size of the community, in which observers can be

expected to know of the overtly Christian pronouncements of the Board).

334. See id. at 806 (“[T]he sharp contrast between the timing of the legal challenges to the

monument in Van Orden and the one in this case sheds significant light on whether the reasonable

observer would have perceived the latter as having the effect of endorsing religion.”).

335. In an unrelated case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court demonstrated another method for

seeking religious peace. In a challenge to a recently installed Ten Commandments monument on

the state capitol grounds, the Court found the installation violated the Oklahoma Constitution’s

prohibition on using public funds or property for the use, benefit, or support of any church or

religion. Prescott v. Okla. Capitol Pres. Comm’n, 373 P.3d 1032, 1034 (Okla. 2015). Although the

U.S. Supreme Court recently found that such state constitutional provisions may not be relied on

to bar the provision of a generally available benefit because of religion, see Trinity Lutheran

Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, 137 S. Ct. 2012 (2017), that would certainly not limit a state’s

ability to reject a single religious monument in a context in which no other religious monuments

were present.

336. See Felix v. City of Bloomfield, 841 F.3d 848 (10th. Cir. 2016).

337. Id. at 857.



2018] FALSE FACTS AND HOLY WAR 355

case, it was that Bloomfield, perhaps recognizing the peril of endorsing religion,
sought to find safe harbor in the free speech of citizens. On the City Hall lawn
near the new monument was placed a sign that included the observation: 

The City has intentionally opened up the lawn around City Hall as a
public forum where local citizens can display monuments that reflect the
City’s history of law and government . . . Any message contained on a
monument does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the City, but are
statements from private citizens.338

The court rejected this characterization by citing the Supreme Court’s 2009
Summum339 decision for the proposition that “permanent monuments are
government speech, regardless of whether a private party sponsored them.”340

Apparently having read that case the same way that the Tenth Circuit would later,
the leaders of Bloomfield revised their “public forum policy” of the City Hall
lawn to remove the word “permanent,” substituting a reapplication process every
decade. This, too, the Court rejected: 

It is no answer for Bloomfield to say that, under Forum Policy No. 2, the
City makes donors reapply every ten years under threat of their
monuments’ removal. Any monument can be removed with a big enough
construction crew. But Bloomfield has no plans to remove the Monument
and imposes no limit on how many ten-year periods will be permitted.341

Although the Circuit Court did not apply a timeliness element to the standing
requirement for challenges to such monuments, it did note the importance of the
rapid objection to the ultimate outcome. It evaluated Van Orden by focusing on
Justice Breyer’s critical vote, and acknowledged the weight he placed on the fact
that the Austin monument had stood for a long time without objection.342

Holy Warriors erected the Stigler and Bloomfield monuments; Fervent
Separationists immediately joined the battle to have them moved off government
property. The Tenth Circuit’s judicious resolutions of both stopped short of
finding a timeliness requirement for standing, but the language of both opinions
could easily be deployed in support of such an armistice in the holy war.343

338. Id. at 861 (emphasis in original). 

339. Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460 (2009).

340. Felix, 841 F.3d at 855.

341. Id.

342. Id. at 859 (“The Supreme Court decided two separate Ten Commandments cases on the

same day with different outcomes, and the ‘determinative’ factor for the different outcomes

appeared to be litigation timing.”).

343. But it must be noted that the Fourth Circuit overtly rejected such an approach last year.

See Am. Humanist Ass’n. v. Md.-Nat’l Capital Park & Planning Comm’n, 874 F.3d 195, 200 (4th

Cir. 2017) (finding that a four-story Latin Cross on a public traffic island violated the Establishment

Clause because its principal effect was the endorsement of Christianity). The court dismissed

Justice Breyer’s approach: “It is also true that the Cross has stood unchallenged for 90 years, which

Appellees argue reinforces its secular effect. But that argument is too simplistic . . . . Perhaps the



356 INDIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 51:305

V. CONCLUSION

If the Supreme Court chose to adopt the rationale of the Tenth Circuit in an
appropriate case, it would go a long way toward cooling the religious strife in the
United States. Unfortunately, because several justices have offered consistent
objections to the endorsement approach, that is not likely to occur. If, on the other
hand, the Supreme Court overtly created timeliness as a principle of standing in
Establishment Clause litigation, it would offer a similar solution. If all parties
knew that no one could challenge old monuments, Fervent Separationists would
launch fewer attacks. On the other hand, the easy availability of such challenges
to new government-religious speech would decrease the Holy Warriors’ incentive
to further government pronouncements in matters of religion. Energetic
combatants in culture wars could find non-spiritual areas to continue their
struggle.

Whether or not the Supreme Court would ever be willing to translate Justice
Breyer’s ideas into an explicit doctrine of standing, it ought to do something.
Although the modern political war of religion is not entirely of its creation, the
Court’s flexible, Muse-like approach to truth when recounting the facts of the
cases before it has raised the intensity of the battles. That intensity benefits no one
but the immediate combatants, and may do real harm to the lasting strength of the
republic. The nine Muses who sit atop the federal judiciary know how to tell the
truth. It is time for them to wish to do so.

longer a violation persists, the greater the affront to those offended.” Id. at 208 (citation omitted).

However, the timeliness test I propose adding to standing would have allowed the plaintiffs to

object to the cross in this case as well, as the government had recently set aside $100,000 to restore

the cross. See id. at 211.