May a school board limit school activities on certain nights to accommodate a particular religious group?
No, not unless the school has a legitimate civil or secular purpose for limiting activities; it may not curtain programs only to accommodate a particular religious group. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled directly on this issue, causing some ambiguity, the Court has heard many cases concerning the First Amendment’s establishment clause. From one of those cases came the Lemon test used by the courts to determine if a law runs contrary to the establishment clause. The secular-purpose standard mentioned above is one part of this test, which the Court developed in 1971 in deciding the case Lemon v. Kurtzman. The Lemon test has three parts; first, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; third, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. So, for example, if school officials could show that there would be little or no participation in a sc
