The 60thAnniversary of theEversonDecision and America's Church-State Proposition

Abstract

On February 10, 1947, the United States Supreme Court handed downEverson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township. For scholars of the First Amendment,Eversonmarks the beginning of the Supreme Court's modern era with respect to church-state relations. It is easy enough to state the reason for the decision's prominence, for it was inEversonwhere the Establishment Clause was first “incorporated” through the Fourteenth Amendment and made applicable to the actions of all state and local governments. But just what did it mean to take the restraints on federal power that comprise the principle of no-establishment and to make them limits on the governments of the several states, as well as on the thousands of municipalities, counties, and school districts that dot the land? In Part II of these remarks, I will focus on what has occurred downstream ofEversonover these event-filled sixty years. As the reader will see, I am of the belief thatEverson'snew deal has resulted in more good than harm for religious freedom. Still the record is mixed, as it is with most major developments. However, before going there, in Part I of this extended essay, I look back in time to recapture just what was in the bundle of restraints that all nine of the Justices inEversonsaid they were bringing forward via the Fourteenth Amendment and making newly binding on the many unsuspecting state and local officials.