Allegheny County v. ACLU - Timeline Event
Time Period
07-03-1989
Description
Allegheny County v. ACLU (1989) provided the Supreme Court with an opportunity to rule on whether the placement of a religious symbol on government property by itself violated the Establishment Clause. The scenario in this case, in which a nativity scene was placed inside a courthouse in Pennsylvania, differed from that in Lynch v. Donnelly (1994) in that the nativity scene was not part of a larger display or surrounded by other symbols. The Supreme Court ruled that this violated the Establishment Clause. It also ruled that the display of a menorah alongside a Christmas tree in Pittsburgh did not violate the Establishment Clause, holding that the combination of the two symbols was a recognition of the winter holiday season and not an endorsement of Judaism and/or Christianity.
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Related Dictionary Terms
Christianity, Christmas, Hanukkah (Chanukah, Chanukkah, or Chanuka), Judaism, MenorahPhotographs
Nativity scene- Wikimedia Commons- photo by Man vyi
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Allegheny County courthouse- Wikimedia Commons- photo by Jim Henderson (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Chief Justice William Rehnquist- US Department of Justice
Book/Journal Source(s)
Flowers, Ronald, 2005. That Godless Court? Supreme Court Decisions on Church-State Relationships, 2nd ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.Web Page Contributor
Robert MartinAffliated with: Assistant Professor, Southeastern Lousiana University
