McCreary County v. Am. C.L. Union, 545 U.S. 844 (2005)

After petitioners, two Kentucky Counties, each posted large, readily visi ble copies of the Ten Commandments in their courthouses, respondents, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) et al., sued under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 to enjoin the displays on the ground that they violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The Counties then adopted nearly identical resolutions calling for a more extensive exhibit meant to show that the Commandments are Kentucky’s “precedent legal code.” The resolutions noted several grounds for taking that position, including the state legislature’s acknowledgment of Christ as the “Prince of Eth ics.” The displays around the Commandments were modified to include eight smaller, historical documents containing religious references as their sole common element, e. g., the Declaration of Independence’s “en dowed by their Creator” passage. Entering a preliminary injunction, the District Court followed the Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, test to find, inter alia, that the original display lacked any secular purpose because the Commandments are a distinctly religious document, and that the second version lacked such a purpose because the Counties narrowly tailored their selection of foundational documents to those spe cifically referring to Christianity. After changing counsel, the Counties revised the exhibits again. No new resolution authorized the new ex hibits, nor did the Counties repeal the resolutions that preceded the second one. The new posting, entitled “The Foundations of American Law and Government Display,” consists of nine framed documents of equal size. One sets out the Commandments explicitly identified as the “King James Version,” quotes them at greater length, and explains that they have profoundly influenced the formation of Western legal thought and this Nation. With the Commandments are framed copies of, e. g., the Star Spangled Banner’s lyrics and the Declaration of Independence, accompanied by statements about their historical and legal significance. On the ACLU’s motion, the District Court included this third display in the injunction despite the Counties’ professed intent to show that the Commandments were part of the foundation of American Law and Gov ernment and to educate county citizens as to the documents. The court took proclaiming the Commandments’ foundational value as a religious, [p. 845] rather than secular, purpose under Stone v. Graham, 449 U. S. 39, and found that the Counties’ asserted educational goals crumbled upon an examination of this litigation’s history. Affirming, the Sixth Circuit stressed that, under Stone, displaying the Commandments bespeaks a religious object unless they are integrated with a secular message. The court saw no integration here because of a lack of a demonstrated ana lytical or historical connection between the Commandments and the other documents.

(c) The Court also avoids the Counties’ alternative tack of trivializ ing the purpose enquiry. They would read the Court’s cases as if the enquiry were so naive that any transparent claim to secularity would [p. 846] satisfy it, and they would cut context out of the enquiry, to the point of ignoring history, no matter what bearing it actually had on the significance of current circumstances. There is no precedent for these arguments, or reason supporting them. Pp. 863–866.

(b) There are two obvious similarities between the display Stone rejected and the first one here: both set out the Commandments’ text as distinct from any traditionally symbolic representation like blank tab lets, and each stood alone, not as part of an arguably secular display. Stone stressed the significance of integrating the Commandments into [p. 847] a secular scheme to forestall the broadcast of an otherwise clearly reli gious message, 449 U. S., at 42, and for good reason, the Commandments being a central point of reference in the religious and moral history of Jews and Christians. They proclaim the existence of a monotheistic god (no other gods), regulate details of religious obligation (no graven images, sabbath breaking, or vain oath swearing), and unmistakably rest even the universally accepted prohibitions (as against murder, theft, etc.) on the sanction of the divinity proclaimed at the text’s beginning. Displaying that text is thus different from symbolic representation, like tablets with 10 roman numerals, which could be seen as alluding to a general notion of law, not a sectarian conception of faith. Where the text is set out, the insistence of the religious message is hard to avoid in the absence of a context plausibly suggesting a message going beyond an excuse to promote the religious point of view. The display in Stone had no such context, and the Counties’ solo exhibit here did nothing more to counter the sectarian implication than the Stone postings. The reasonable observer could only think that the Counties meant to empha size and celebrate the Commandments’ religious message. Pp. 868–869.

(d) The lower courts’ conclusion that no legitimizing secular pur pose prompted the Counties’ third display, the “Foundations of Ameri can Law and Government” exhibit, is amply justified. That display placed the Commandments in the company of other documents the Counties deemed especially significant in the historical foundation of American government. In trying to persuade the District Court to lift the preliminary injunction, the Counties cited several new purposes for the third version, including a desire to educate county citizens as to the significance of the documents displayed. The Counties’ claims, how ever, persuaded neither that court, which was intimately familiar with this litigation’s details, nor the Sixth Circuit. Where both lower courts were unable to discern an arguably valid secular purpose, this Court normally should hesitate to find one. Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U. S. [p. 848] 578, 594. The Counties’ new statements of purpose were presented only as a litigating position, there being no further authorizing resolu tions by the Counties’ governing boards. And although repeal of the earlier county authorizations would not have erased them from the rec ord of evidence bearing on current purpose, the extraordinary resolu tions for the second displays passed just months earlier were not re pealed or otherwise repudiated. Indeed, the sectarian spirit of the resolutions found enhanced expression in the third display, which quoted more of the Commandments’ purely religious language than the first two displays had done. No reasonable observer, therefore, could accept the claim that the Counties had cast off the objective so unmistakable in the earlier displays. Nor did the selection of posted material suggest a clear theme that might prevail over evidence of the continuing reli gious object. For example, it is at least odd in a collection of documents said to be “foundational” to include a patriotic anthem, but to omit the Fourteenth Amendment, the most significant structural provision adopted since the original framing. An observer would probably sus pect the Counties of reaching for any way to keep a religious document on the walls of courthouses constitutionally required to embody reli gious neutrality. Pp. 870–873.

In November 1999, respondents American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky et al. sued the Counties in Federal Dis trict Court under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and sought a preliminary injunction against maintaining the dis plays, which the ACLU charged were violations of the pro hibition of religious establishment included in the First Amendment of the Constitution.3 Within a month, and be [p. 853] fore the District Court had responded to the request for in junction, the legislative body of each County authorized a second, expanded display, by nearly identical resolutions re citing that the Ten Commandments are “the precedent legal code upon which the civil and criminal codes of . . . Kentucky are founded,” and stating several grounds for taking that position: that “the Ten Commandments are codified in Ken tucky’s civil and criminal laws”; that the Kentucky House of Representatives had in 1993 “voted unanimously . . . to adjourn . . . ‘in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics’ ”; that the “County Judge and . . . magis trates agree with the arguments set out by Judge [Roy] Moore” in defense of his “display [of] the Ten Command ments in his courtroom”; and that the “Founding Father[s] [had an] explicit understanding of the duty of elected officials to publicly acknowledge God as the source of America’s strength and direction.” Def. Exh. 1, at 1–3, 6.

As directed by the resolutions, the Counties expanded the displays of the Ten Commandments in their locations, pre sumably along with copies of the resolution, which instructed that it, too, be posted, id., at 9. In addition to the first dis play’s large framed copy of the edited King James version of the Commandments,4 the second included eight other docu ments in smaller frames, each either having a religious [p. 854] theme or excerpted to highlight a religious element. The documents were the “endowed by their Creator” passage from the Declaration of Independence; the Preamble to the Constitution of Kentucky; the national motto, “In God We Trust”; a page from the Congressional Record of February 2, 1983, proclaiming the Year of the Bible and including a statement of the Ten Commandments; a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln designating April 30, 1863, a Na tional Day of Prayer and Humiliation; an excerpt from Presi dent Lincoln’s “Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible,” reading that “[t]he Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man”; a proclamation by President Reagan marking 1983 the Year of the Bible; and the Mayflower Compact. 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 684; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 695–696.

After argument, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction on May 5, 2000, ordering that the “display . . . be removed from [each] County Courthouse IMMEDIATELY” and that no county official “erect or cause to be erected simi lar displays.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 691; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 702–703. The court’s analysis of the situation followed the three-part formulation first stated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971). As to governmental purpose, it con cluded that the original display “lack[ed] any secular pur pose” because the Commandments “are a distinctly religious document, believed by many Christians and Jews to be the direct and revealed word of God.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 686; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 698. Although the Counties had maintained that the original display was meant to be educational, “[t]he narrow scope of the display—a single religious text unaccom panied by any interpretation explaining its role as a founda tional document—can hardly be said to present meaningfully the story of this country’s religious traditions.” 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 686–687; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 698. The court found that the second version also “clearly lack[ed] a secular purpose” because the “Count[ies] narrowly tailored [their] selection of [p. 855] foundational documents to incorporate only those with spe cific references to Christianity.”5 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 687; 96 F. Supp. 2d, at 699.

The ACLU moved to supplement the preliminary injunc tion to enjoin the Counties’ third display,6 and the Counties responded with several explanations for the new version, in [p. 857] cluding desires “to demonstrate that the Ten Command ments were part of the foundation of American Law and Government” and “to educate the citizens of the county re garding some of the documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government.” 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 848 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court, however, took the objective of proclaiming the Commandments’ foundational value as “a religious, rather than secular, purpose” under Stone v. Graham, 449 U. S. 39 (1980) (per curiam), 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 849, and found that the assertion that the Counties’ broader educational goals are secular “crumble[s] . . . upon an examination of the his tory of this litigation,” ibid. In light of the Counties’ deci sion to post the Commandments by themselves in the first instance, contrary to Stone, and later to “accentuat[e]” the religious objective by surrounding the Commandments with “specific references to Christianity,” the District Court un derstood the Counties’ “clear” purpose as being to post the Commandments, not to educate.7 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 849–850 (internal quotation marks omitted).

As requested, the trial court supplemented the injunction, and a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. The Circuit majority stressed that under Stone, displaying the Commandments bespeaks a religious object unless they are integrated with other material so as to carry “a secular message,” 354 F. 3d 438, 449 (2003). The majority judges saw no integration here because of a “lack of a demonstrated analytical or historical connection [be [p. 858] tween the Commandments and] the other documents.” Id., at 451. They noted in particular that the Counties offered no support for their claim that the Ten Commandments “pro vide[d] the moral backdrop” to the Declaration of Independ ence or otherwise “profoundly influenced” it. Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The majority found that the Counties’ purpose was religious, not educational, given the nature of the Commandments as “an active symbol of reli gion [stating] ‘the religious duties of believers.’ ” Id., at 455. The judges in the majority understood the identical displays to emphasize “a single religious influence, with no mention of any other religious or secular influences,” id., at 454, and they took the very history of the litigation as evidence of the Counties’ religious objective, id., at 457.

Ever since Lemon v. Kurtzman summarized the three fa miliar considerations for evaluating Establishment Clause claims, looking to whether government action has “a secular legislative purpose” has been a common, albeit seldom dis positive, element of our cases. 403 U. S., at 612. Though we have found government action motivated by an illegiti mate purpose only four times since Lemon,9 and “the secular purpose requirement alone may rarely be determinative . . . , it nevertheless serves an important function.”10 Wallace v. [p. 860] Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 75 (1985) (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment).

Indeed, the purpose apparent from government action can have an impact more significant than the result expressly [p. 861] decreed: when the government maintains Sunday closing laws, it advances religion only minimally because many working people would take the day as one of rest regardless, but if the government justified its decision with a stated de sire for all Americans to honor Christ, the divisive thrust of the official action would be inescapable. This is the teaching of McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420 (1961), which upheld Sunday closing statutes on practical, secular grounds after finding that the government had forsaken the religious purposes behind centuries-old predecessor laws. Id., at 449–451.

Examination of purpose is a staple of statutory interpreta tion that makes up the daily fare of every appellate court in the country, e. g., General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline, 540 U. S. 581, 600 (2004) (interpreting statute in light of its “text, structure, purpose, and history”), and govern mental purpose is a key element of a good deal of constitu tional doctrine, e. g., Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976) (discriminatory purpose required for Equal Protection violation); Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm’n, 432 U. S. 333, 352–353 (1977) (discriminatory pur pose relevant to dormant Commerce Clause claim); Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520 (1993) (discriminatory purpose raises level of scrutiny required by free exercise claim). With enquiries into purpose this com mon, if they were nothing but hunts for mares’ nests deflect [p. 862] ing attention from bare judicial will, the whole notion of pur pose in law would have dropped into disrepute long ago.

The cases with findings of a predominantly religious pur pose point to the straightforward nature of the test. In Wallace, for example, we inferred purpose from a change of wording from an earlier statute to a later one, each dealing with prayer in schools. 472 U. S., at 58–60. And in Ed wards, we relied on a statute’s text and the detailed public comments of its sponsor, when we sought the purpose of a state law requiring creationism to be taught alongside evolu tion. 482 U. S., at 586–588. In other cases, the government action itself bespoke the purpose, as in Abington, where the object of required Bible study in public schools was patently religious, 374 U. S., at 223–224; in Stone, the Court held that the “[p]osting of religious texts on the wall serve[d] no . . . educational function,” and found that if “the posted copies of the Ten Commandments [were] to have any effect at all, it [p. 863] [would] be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments.” 449 U. S., at 42. In each case, the government’s action was held unconstitutional only because openly available data sup ported a commonsense conclusion that a religious objective permeated the government’s action.

After declining the invitation to abandon concern with purpose wholesale, we also have to avoid the Counties’ alter native tack of trivializing the enquiry into it. The Counties would read the cases as if the purpose enquiry were so naive that any transparent claim to secularity would satisfy it, and [p. 864] they would cut context out of the enquiry, to the point of ignoring history, no matter what bearing it actually had on the significance of current circumstances. There is no prec edent for the Counties’ arguments, or reason supporting them.

Even the Counties’ own cited authority confirms that we have not made the purpose test a pushover for any secular claim. True, Wallace said government action is tainted by its object “if it is entirely motivated by a purpose to advance religion,” 472 U. S., at 56, a remark that suggests, in isola tion, a fairly complaisant attitude. But in that very case the Court declined to credit Alabama’s stated secular rationale of “accommodation” for legislation authorizing a period of silence in school for meditation or voluntary prayer, given the implausibility of that explanation in light of another stat ute already accommodating children wishing to pray. Id., at 57, n. 45 (internal quotation marks omitted). And it would [p. 865] be just as much a mistake to infer that a timid standard underlies the statement in Lynch v. Donnelly that the pur pose enquiry looks to whether government “activity was mo tivated wholly by religious considerations,” 465 U. S., at 680; for two cases cited for that proposition had examined and rejected claims of secular purposes that turned out to be implausible or inadequate:11 Stone, supra, at 41; Abington, 374 U. S., at 223–224.12 See also Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U. S. 589, 602 (1988) (using the “motivated wholly by an im permissible purpose” language, but citing Lynch and Stone). As we said, the Court often does accept governmental state ments of purpose, in keeping with the respect owed in the first instance to such official claims. But in those unusual cases where the claim was an apparent sham, or the secular purpose secondary, the unsurprising results have been find ings of no adequate secular object, as against a predomi nantly religious one.13

We take Stone as the initial legal benchmark, our only case dealing with the constitutionality of displaying the Com mandments. Stone recognized that the Commandments are an “instrument of religion” and that, at least on the facts before it, the display of their text could presumptively be understood as meant to advance religion: although state law specifically required their posting in public school class rooms, their isolated exhibition did not leave room even for an argument that secular education explained their being there. 449 U. S., at 41, n. 3 (internal quotation marks omit ted). But Stone did not purport to decide the constitutional ity of every possible way the Commandments might be set out by the government, and under the Establishment Clause detail is key. County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liber ties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573, 595 [p. 868] (1989) (opinion of Blackmun, J.) (“[T]he question is what viewers may fairly understand to be the purpose of the dis play. That inquiry, of necessity, turns upon the context in which the contested object appears” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). Hence, we look to the record of evidence showing the progression leading up to the third display of the Commandments.

The display rejected in Stone had two obvious similarities to the first one in the sequence here: both set out a text of the Commandments as distinct from any traditionally sym bolic representation, and each stood alone, not part of an arguably secular display. Stone stressed the significance of integrating the Commandments into a secular scheme to forestall the broadcast of an otherwise clearly religious mes sage, 449 U. S., at 42, and for good reason, the Command ments being a central point of reference in the religious and moral history of Jews and Christians. They proclaim the existence of a monotheistic god (no other gods). They regu late details of religious obligation (no graven images, no sab bath breaking, no vain oath swearing). And they unmistak ably rest even the universally accepted prohibitions (as against murder, theft, and the like) on the sanction of the divinity proclaimed at the beginning of the text. Displaying that text is thus different from a symbolic depiction, like tab lets with 10 roman numerals, which could be seen as alluding to a general notion of law, not a sectarian conception of faith. Where the text is set out, the insistence of the religious mes sage is hard to avoid in the absence of a context plausibly suggesting a message going beyond an excuse to promote the religious point of view. The display in Stone had no con text that might have indicated an object beyond the religious character of the text, and the Counties’ solo exhibit here did nothing more to counter the sectarian implication than the [p. 869] postings at issue in Stone.16 See also County of Allegheny, supra, at 598 (“Here, unlike in Lynch [v. Donnelly], nothing in the context of the display detracts from the cre` che’s re ligious message”). Actually, the posting by the Counties lacked even the Stone display’s implausible disclaimer that the Commandments were set out to show their effect on the civil law.17 What is more, at the ceremony for posting the framed Commandments in Pulaski County, the county execu tive was accompanied by his pastor, who testified to the cer tainty of the existence of God. The reasonable observer could only think that the Counties meant to emphasize and celebrate the Commandments’ religious message.

Once the Counties were sued, they modified the exhibits and invited additional insight into their purpose in a display that hung for about six months. This new one was the prod uct of forthright and nearly identical Pulaski and McCreary County resolutions listing a series of American historical documents with theistic and Christian references, which [p. 870] were to be posted in order to furnish a setting for displaying the Ten Commandments and any “other Kentucky and American historical documen[t]” without raising concern about “any Christian or religious references” in them. Def. Exh. 1, at 1. As mentioned, the resolutions expressed sup port for an Alabama judge who posted the Commandments in his courtroom, and cited the fact the Kentucky Legislature once adjourned a session in honor of “Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics.” Id., at 2–3.

After the Counties changed lawyers, they mounted a third display, without a new resolution or repeal of the old one. The result was the “Foundations of American Law and Gov [p. 871] ernment” exhibit, which placed the Commandments in the company of other documents the Counties thought especially significant in the historical foundation of American govern ment. In trying to persuade the District Court to lift the preliminary injunction, the Counties cited several new pur poses for the third version, including a desire “to educate the citizens of the county regarding some of the documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government.”18 145 F. Supp. 2d, at 848 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Counties’ claims did not, however, persuade the court, intimately familiar with the de tails of this litigation, or the Court of Appeals, neither of which found a legitimizing secular purpose in this third ver sion of the display. “ ‘When both courts [that have already passed on the case] are unable to discern an arguably valid secular purpose, this Court normally should hesitate to find one.’ ” Edwards, 482 U. S., at 594, n. 15 (quoting Wallace, 472 U. S., at 66 (Powell, J., concurring)). The conclusions of the two courts preceding us in this case are well warranted.

These new statements of purpose were presented only as a litigating position, there being no further authorizing ac tion by the Counties’ governing boards. And although re peal of the earlier county authorizations would not have erased them from the record of evidence bearing on current purpose,19 the extraordinary resolutions for the second dis play passed just months earlier were not repealed or other [p. 872] wise repudiated.20 Indeed, the sectarian spirit of the com mon resolution found enhanced expression in the third display, which quoted more of the purely religious language of the Commandments than the first two displays had done; for additions, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 189a (“I the LORD thy God am a jealous God”) (text of Second Commandment in third display); (“the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain”) (text of Third Commandment); and (“that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee”) (text of Fifth Commandment). No reasonable observer could swallow the claim that the Coun ties had cast off the objective so unmistakable in the earlier displays.

Nor did the selection of posted material suggest a clear theme that might prevail over evidence of the continuing religious object. In a collection of documents said to be “foundational” to American government, it is at least odd to include a patriotic anthem, but to omit the Fourteenth Amendment, the most significant structural provision adopted since the original Framing. And it is no less baf fling to leave out the original Constitution of 1787 while quoting the 1215 Magna Carta even to the point of its decla ration that “fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames.” Id., at 205a, ¶ 33. If an observer found these choices and omissions perplexing in isolation, he would be puzzled for a [p. 873] different reason when he read the Declaration of Independ ence seeking confirmation for the Counties’ posted explana tion that the Ten Commandments’ “influence is clearly seen in the Declaration,” id., at 180a; in fact the observer would find that the Commandments are sanctioned as divine imper atives, while the Declaration of Independence holds that the authority of government to enforce the law derives “from the consent of the governed,” id., at 190a.21 If the observer had not thrown up his hands, he would probably suspect that the Counties were simply reaching for any way to keep a religious document on the walls of courthouses constitution ally required to embody religious neutrality.22

In holding the preliminary injunction adequately sup ported by evidence that the Counties’ purpose had not changed at the third stage, we do not decide that the Coun [p. 874] ties’ past actions forever taint any effort on their part to deal with the subject matter. We hold only that purpose needs to be taken seriously under the Establishment Clause and needs to be understood in light of context; an implausible claim that governmental purpose has changed should not carry the day in a court of law any more than in a head with common sense. It is enough to say here that district courts are fully capable of adjusting preliminary relief to take ac count of genuine changes in constitutionally significant condi tions. See Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 542 U. S. 656 (2004).

The importance of neutrality as an interpretive guide is no less true now than it was when the Court broached the principle in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1 (1947), and a word needs to be said about the different view taken in today’s dissent. We all agree, of course, on the need for some interpretative help. The First Amendment contains no textual definition of “establishment,” and the [p. 875] term is certainly not self-defining. No one contends that the prohibition of establishment stops at a designation of a na tional (or with Fourteenth Amendment incorporation, Cant well v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 303 (1940), a state) church, but nothing in the text says just how much more it covers. There is no simple answer, for more than one reason.

Given the variety of interpretative problems, the principle of neutrality has provided a good sense of direction: the gov ernment may not favor one religion over another, or religion over irreligion, religious choice being the prerogative of indi [p. 876] viduals under the Free Exercise Clause. The principle has been helpful simply because it responds to one of the major concerns that prompted adoption of the Religion Clauses. The Framers and the citizens of their time intended not only to protect the integrity of individual conscience in religious matters, Wallace, 472 U. S., at 52–54, and n. 38, but to guard against the civic divisiveness that follows when the govern ment weighs in on one side of religious debate; nothing does a better job of roiling society, a point that needed no expla nation to the descendants of English Puritans and Cavaliers (or Massachusetts Puritans and Baptists). E. g., Everson, supra, at 8 (“A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape [religious persecu tion]”). A sense of the past thus points to governmental neutrality as an objective of the Establishment Clause, and a sensible standard for applying it. To be sure, given its generality as a principle, an appeal to neutrality alone cannot possibly lay every issue to rest, or tell us what issues on the margins are substantial enough for constitutional signifi cance, a point that has been clear from the founding era to modern times. E. g., Letter from J. Madison to R. Adams (1832), in 5 The Founders’ Constitution 107 (P. Kurland & R. Lerner eds. 1987) (“[In calling for separation] I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions & doubts on unessential points”); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398, 422 (1963) (Harlan, J., dissenting) (“The constitutional obligation of ‘neutrality’ . . . is not so narrow a channel that the slightest deviation from an absolutely straight course leads to condemnation”). But invoking neu trality is a prudent way of keeping sight of something the Framers of the First Amendment thought important.

The dissent, however, puts forward a limitation on the ap plication of the neutrality principle, with citations to histori cal evidence said to show that the Framers understood the [p. 877] ban on establishment of religion as sufficiently narrow to allow the government to espouse submission to the divine will. The dissent identifies God as the God of monotheism, all of whose three principal strains (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) acknowledge the religious importance of the Ten Commandments. Post, at 893–894. On the dissent’s view, it apparently follows that even rigorous espousal of a com mon element of this common monotheism is consistent with the establishment ban.

The historical record, moreover, is complicated beyond the dissent’s account by the writings and practices of figures no less influential than Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Jefferson, for example, refused to issue Thanksgiving Procla mations because he believed that they violated the Constitu tion. See Letter to S. Miller (Jan. 23, 1808), in 5 The Found ers’ Constitution, supra, at 98. And Madison, whom the dissent claims as supporting its thesis, post, at 888, criticized Virginia’s general assessment tax not just because it re quired people to donate “three pence” to religion, but be cause “it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Reli gion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority.” 505 U. S., at 622 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Let ter from J. Madison to E. Livingston (July 10, 1822), in 5 The Founders’ Constitution, supra, at 106 (“[R]eligion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together”); Letter from J. Madison to J. Adams (Sept. 1833), in Religion and Politics in the Early Republic 120 (D. Dresi bach ed. 1996) (stating that with respect to religion and gov ernment the “tendency to a usurpation on one side, or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded against by an entire abstinence of the [p. 879] Government from interference”); Van Orden v. Perry, ante, at 724–725 (Stevens, J., dissenting).25

While the dissent fails to show a consistent original under standing from which to argue that the neutrality principle should be rejected, it does manage to deliver a surprise. As mentioned, the dissent says that the deity the Framers had in mind was the God of monotheism, with the consequence that government may espouse a tenet of traditional monothe ism. This is truly a remarkable view. Other Members of the Court have dissented on the ground that the Establish ment Clause bars nothing more than governmental prefer ence for one religion over another, e. g., Wallace, 472 U. S., at 98–99 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting), but at least religion has previously been treated inclusively. Today’s dissent, how [p. 880] ever, apparently means that government should be free to approve the core beliefs of a favored religion over the tenets of others, a view that should trouble anyone who prizes reli gious liberty. Certainly history cannot justify it; on the con trary, history shows that the religion of concern to the Fram ers was not that of the monotheistic faiths generally, but Christianity in particular, a fact that no Member of this Court takes as a premise for construing the Religion Clauses. Justice Story probably reflected the thinking of the framing generation when he wrote in his Commentaries that the purpose of the Clause was “not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidel ity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects.” R. Cord, Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction 13 (1988) (empha sis deleted). The Framers would, therefore, almost cer tainly object to the dissent’s unstated reasoning that because Christianity was a monotheistic “religion,” monotheism with Mosaic antecedents should be a touchstone of establishment interpretation.26 Even on originalist critiques of existing precedent there is, it seems, no escape from interpretative consequences that would surprise the Framers. Thus, it ap pears to be common ground in the interpretation of a Consti tution “intended to endure for ages to come,” McCulloch v. [p. 881] Maryland, supra, at 415, that applications unanticipated by the Framers are inevitable.

I join in the Court’s opinion. The First Amendment ex presses our Nation’s fundamental commitment to religious liberty by means of two provisions—one protecting the free exercise of religion, the other barring establishment of reli gion. They were written by the descendents of people who had come to this land precisely so that they could practice their religion freely. Together with the other First Amend ment guarantees—of free speech, a free press, and the rights to assemble and petition—the Religion Clauses were de signed to safeguard the freedom of conscience and belief that those immigrants had sought. They embody an idea that was once considered radical: Free people are entitled to free [p. 882] and diverse thoughts, which government ought neither to constrain nor to direct.

Our guiding principle has been James Madison’s—that “[t]he Religion . . . of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man.” Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 2 Writings of James Madi son 183, 184 (G. Hunt ed. 1901) (hereinafter Memorial). To that end, we have held that the guarantees of religious free dom protect citizens from religious incursions by the States as well as by the Federal Government. Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 16 (1947); Cantwell v. Connecti cut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940). Government may not coerce a per [p. 883] son into worshiping against her will, nor prohibit her from worshiping according to it. It may not prefer one religion over another or promote religion over nonbelief. Everson, supra, at 15–16. It may not entangle itself with religion. Walz v. Tax Comm’n of City of New York, 397 U. S. 664, 674 (1970). And government may not, by “endorsing religion or a religious practice,” “mak[e] adherence to religion relevant to a person’s standing in the political community.” Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 69 (1985) (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment).

Given the history of this particular display of the Ten Commandments, the Court correctly finds an Establishment Clause violation. See ante, at 867–873. The purpose be hind the counties’ display is relevant because it conveys an unmistakable message of endorsement to the reasonable ob [p. 884] server. See Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 690 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring).

We owe our First Amendment to a generation with a pro found commitment to religion and a profound commitment to religious liberty—visionaries who held their faith “with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered [p. 885] to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.” Zorach, 343 U. S., at 324–325 (Jackson, J., dissenting). In my opinion, the display at issue was an establishment of reli gion in violation of our Constitution. For the reasons given above, I join in the Court’s opinion.

That is one model of the relationship between church and state—a model spread across Europe by the armies of Napo leon, and reflected in the Constitution of France, which be gins, “France is [a] . . . secular . . . Republic.” France Const., Art. 1, in 7 Constitutions of the Countries of the World, p. 1 (G. Flanz ed. 2000). Religion is to be strictly excluded from the public forum. This is not, and never was, the model adopted by America. George Washington added to the form of Presidential oath prescribed by Art. II, § 1, cl. 8, of the Constitution, the concluding words “so help me God.” See Blomquist, The Presidential Oath, the American National In terest and a Call for Presiprudence, 73 UMKC L. Rev. 1, 34 (2004). The Supreme Court under John Marshall opened its sessions with the prayer, “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” 1 C. Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History 469 (rev. ed. 1926) (internal quotation marks omitted). The First Congress instituted the practice of beginning its legislative sessions with a prayer. Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783, 787–788 (1983). The same week that Congress submitted the Establishment Clause as part of the Bill of Rights for ratification by the States, it enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Sen ate. Id., at 788. The day after the First Amendment was proposed, the same Congress that had proposed it requested the President to proclaim “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed, by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favours of Almighty God.” H. R. Jour., 1st Cong., 1st Sess., 123 (1826 ed.); see also Sen. Jour., 1st Sess., 88 (1820 ed.). President Washington offered the first Thanksgiving Proclamation shortly thereafter, devoting November 26, 1789, on behalf of the American people “ ‘to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the be neficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be,’ ” Van Orden v. Perry, ante, at 687 (plurality opinion) (quoting President Washington’s first Thanksgiving Procla mation), thus beginning a tradition of offering gratitude to [p. 887] God that continues today. See Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 100–103 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).1 The same Congress also reenacted the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787, 1 Stat. 50, Article III of which provided: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good govern ment and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Id., at 52, n. (a). And of course the First Amendment itself accords reli gion (and no other manner of belief) special constitutional protection.

These actions of our First President and Congress and the Marshall Court were not idiosyncratic; they reflected the be liefs of the period. Those who wrote the Constitution be lieved that morality was essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion was the best way to fos ter morality. The “fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitu tion itself.” School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 213 (1963). See Underkuffler-Freund, The Separation of the Religious and the Secular: A Foundational Challenge to First-Amendment Theory, 36 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 837, 896–918 (1995). President Washington opened his Presidency with a prayer, see Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States 1, 2 (1989), and reminded his fellow citizens at the conclusion of it that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle,” Farewell Address (1796), reprinted in 35 Writings of George Washing ton 229 (J. Fitzpatrick ed. 1940). President John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia, “we have no government [p. 888] armed with power capable of contending with human pas sions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our Constitu tion was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Letter (Oct. 11, 1798), reprinted in 9 Works of John Adams 229 (C. Adams ed. 1971). Thomas Jefferson concluded his second in augural address by inviting his audience to pray:

Nor have the views of our people on this matter signifi cantly changed. Presidents continue to conclude the Presi dential oath with the words “so help me God.” Our legisla tures, state and national, continue to open their sessions with prayer led by official chaplains. The sessions of this Court continue to open with the prayer “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” Invocation of the Al mighty by our public figures, at all levels of government, [p. 889] remains commonplace. Our coinage bears the motto, “IN GOD WE TRUST.” And our Pledge of Allegiance contains the acknowledgment that we are a Nation “under God.” As one of our Supreme Court opinions rightly observed, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 313 (1952), re peated with approval in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 675 (1984); Marsh, 463 U. S., at 792; Abington Township, supra, at 213.

With all of this reality (and much more) staring it in the face, how can the Court possibly assert that the “ ‘First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between . . . religion and nonreligion,’ ” ante, at 860, and that “[m]ani festing a purpose to favor . . . adherence to religion gener ally,” ibid., is unconstitutional? Who says so? Surely not the words of the Constitution. Surely not the history and traditions that reflect our society’s constant understanding of those words. Surely not even the current sense of our society, recently reflected in an Act of Congress adopted unanimously by the Senate and with only five nays in the House of Representatives, see 148 Cong. Rec. 12041 (June 28, 2002); id., at 19518 (Oct. 8, 2002), criticizing a Court of Appeals opinion that had held “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. See Act of Nov. 13, 2002, §§ 1(9), 2(a), 3(a), 116 Stat. 2057, 2058, 2060–2061 (reaffirming the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Motto (“In God We Trust”) and stating that the Pledge of Allegiance is “clearly consistent with the text and intent of the Constitution”). Nothing stands behind the Court’s assertion that govern mental affirmation of the society’s belief in God is unconstitu tional except the Court’s own say-so, citing as support only the unsubstantiated say-so of earlier Courts going back no further than the mid-20th century. See ante, at 860, citing Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327, 335 (1987), in turn citing Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 612 (1971), in [p. 890] turn citing Board of Ed. of Central School Dist. No. 1 v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236, 243 (1968), in turn quoting Abington Township, 374 U. S., at 222, in turn citing Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 15 (1947).2 And it is, moreover, a thoroughly discredited say-so. It is discredited, to begin with, because a majority of the Justices on the current Court (including at least one Member of today’s majority) have, in separate opinions, repudiated the brain-spun “Lemon test” that embodies the supposed principle of neutrality between religion and irreligion. See Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Mori ches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384, 398–399 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (collecting criticism of Lemon); Van Orden, ante, at 692–693, 697 (Thomas, J., con curring); Board of Ed. of Kiryas Joel Village School Dist. v. Grumet, 512 U. S. 687, 720 (1994) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chap ter, 492 U. S. 573, 655–656, 672–673 (1989) (Kennedy, J., con curring in judgment in part and dissenting in part); Wallace, 472 U. S., at 112 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting); see also Com mittee for Public Ed. and Religious Liberty v. Regan, 444 U. S. 646, 671 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (disparaging “the sisyphean task of trying to patch together the ‘blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier’ described in Lemon”). And it is discredited because the Court has not had the cour age (or the foolhardiness) to apply the neutrality principle consistently.

What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indis [p. 891] pensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle. That is what prevents judges from ruling now this way, now that—thumbs up or thumbs down—as their personal preferences dictate. Today’s opin ion forthrightly (or actually, somewhat less than forthrightly) admits that it does not rest upon consistently applied princi ple. In a revealing footnote, ante, at 859–860, n. 10, the Court acknowledges that the “Establishment Clause doc trine” it purports to be applying “lacks the comfort of cate gorical absolutes.” What the Court means by this lovely euphemism is that sometimes the Court chooses to decide cases on the principle that government cannot favor religion, and sometimes it does not. The footnote goes on to say that “[i]n special instances we have found good reason” to dis pense with the principle, but “[n]o such reasons present themselves here.” Ibid. It does not identify all of those “special instances,” much less identify the “good reason” for their existence.

I have cataloged elsewhere the variety of circumstances in which this Court—even after its embrace of Lemon’s stated prohibition of such behavior—has approved government ac tion “undertaken with the specific intention of improving the position of religion,” Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U. S. 578, 616 (1987) (Scalia, J., dissenting). See id., at 616–618. Suffice it to say here that when the government relieves churches from the obligation to pay property taxes, when it allows students to absent themselves from public school to take religious classes, and when it exempts religious organi zations from generally applicable prohibitions of religious discrimination, it surely means to bestow a benefit on reli gious practice—but we have approved it. See Amos, supra, at 338 (exemption from federal prohibition of religious dis crimination by employers); Walz v. Tax Comm’n of City of New York, 397 U. S. 664, 673 (1970) (property tax exemption for church property); Zorach, supra, at 308, 315 (law per mitting students to leave public school for the purpose of [p. 892] receiving religious education). Indeed, we have even ap proved (post-Lemon) government-led prayer to God. In Marsh v. Chambers, the Court upheld the Nebraska State Legislature’s practice of paying a chaplain to lead it in prayer at the opening of legislative sessions. The Court explained that “[t]o invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not . . . an ‘establishment’ of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable ac knowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.” 463 U. S., at 792. (Why, one wonders, is not respect for the Ten Commandments a tolerable acknowl edgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country?)

The only “good reason” for ignoring the neutrality princi ple set forth in any of these cases was the antiquity of the practice at issue. See id., at 786–792, 794; Walz, supra, at 676–680. That would be a good reason for finding the neu trality principle a mistaken interpretation of the Constitu tion, but it is hardly a good reason for letting an unconstitu tional practice continue. We did not hide behind that reason in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533 (1964), which found un constitutional bicameral state legislatures of a sort that had existed since the beginning of the Republic. And almost monthly, it seems, the Court has not shrunk from invalidat ing aspects of criminal procedure and penology of similar vintage. See, e. g., Deck v. Missouri, 544 U. S. 622, 633 (2005) (invalidating practice of shackling defendants absent “special circumstances”); id., at 641–645 (Thomas, J., dissent ing); Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551, 568 (2005) (invalidat ing practice of executing under-18-year-old offenders); id., at 611, n. 2 (Scalia, J., dissenting). What, then, could be the genuine “good reason” for occasionally ignoring the neu trality principle? I suggest it is the instinct for self preservation, and the recognition that the Court, which “has no influence over either the sword or the purse,” The Feder alist No. 78, p. 412 (J. Pole ed. 2005) (A. Hamilton), cannot go [p. 893] too far down the road of an enforced neutrality that contra dicts both historical fact and current practice without losing all that sustains it: the willingness of the people to accept its interpretation of the Constitution as definitive, in preference to the contrary interpretation of the democratically elected branches.

Besides appealing to the demonstrably false principle that the government cannot favor religion over irreligion, today’s opinion suggests that the posting of the Ten Commandments violates the principle that the government cannot favor one religion over another. See ante, at 868; see also Van Orden, ante, at 717–718 (Stevens, J., dissenting). That is indeed a valid principle where public aid or assistance to religion is concerned, see Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U. S. 639, 652 (2002), or where the free exercise of religion is at issue, Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 532–533 (1993); id., at 557–558 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), but it necessarily applies in a more limited sense to public acknowledgment of the Cre ator. If religion in the public forum had to be entirely non denominational, there could be no religion in the public forum at all. One cannot say the word “God,” or “the Al mighty,” one cannot offer public supplication or thanksgiv ing, without contradicting the beliefs of some people that there are many gods, or that God or the gods pay no atten tion to human affairs. With respect to public acknowledg ment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation’s 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. The Thanksgiving Proclamation issued by George Washing ton at the instance of the First Congress was scrupulously nondenominational—but it was monotheistic.3 In Marsh v. [p. 894] Chambers, supra, we said that the fact the particular pray ers offered in the Nebraska Legislature were “in the Judeo-Christian tradition,” id., at 793, posed no additional problem, because “there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief,” id., at 794–795.

A few remarks are necessary in response to the criticism of this dissent by the Court, as well as Justice Stevens’ criticism in the related case of Van Orden v. Perry, ante, p. 707. Justice Stevens’ writing is largely devoted to an attack upon a straw man. “[R]eliance on early religious proclamations and statements made by the Founders is . . . problematic,” he says, “because those views were not es poused at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 nor en shrined in the Constitution’s text.” Van Orden, ante, at 724 (dissenting opinion) (footnote omitted). But I have not re lied upon (as he and the Court in this case do) mere “procla mations and statements” of the Founders. I have relied pri marily upon official acts and official proclamations of the United States or of the component branches of its Govern ment, including the First Congress’s beginning of the tradi tion of legislative prayer to God, its appointment of congres sional chaplains, its legislative proposal of a Thanksgiving Proclamation, and its reenactment of the Northwest Terri tory Ordinance; our first President’s issuance of a Thanksgiv ing Proclamation; and invocation of God at the opening of sessions of the Supreme Court. The only mere “proclama tions and statements” of the Founders I have relied upon were statements of Founders who occupied federal office, and spoke in at least a quasi-official capacity—Washington’s prayer at the opening of his Presidency and his Farewell Address, President John Adams’ letter to the Massachusetts Militia, and Jefferson’s and Madison’s inaugural addresses. The Court and Justice Stevens, by contrast, appeal to no official or even quasi-official action in support of their view of the Establishment Clause—only James Madison’s Memo rial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, writ ten before the Federal Constitution had even been proposed, [p. 896] two letters written by Madison long after he was President, and the quasi-official inaction of Thomas Jefferson in refus ing to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation. See ante, at 878–879; Van Orden, ante, at 724–725 (Stevens, J., dissenting). The Madison Memorial and Remonstrance, dealing as it does with enforced contribution to religion rather than public ac knowledgment of God, is irrelevant; one of the letters is ut terly ambiguous as to the point at issue here, and should not be read to contradict Madison’s statements in his first inaugural address, quoted earlier; even the other letter does not disapprove public acknowledgment of God, unless one posits (what Madison’s own actions as President would con tradict) that reference to God contradicts “the equality of all religious sects.” See Letter from James Madison to Ed ward Livingston (July 10, 1822), in 5 The Founders’ Constitu tion 105–106 (P. Kurland & R. Lerner eds. 1987). And as to Jefferson: The notoriously self-contradicting Jefferson did not choose to have his nonauthorship of a Thanksgiving Proc lamation inscribed on his tombstone. What he did have in scribed was his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Reli gious Freedom, a governmental act which begins “Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free . . . .” Va. Code Ann. § 57–1 (Lexis 2003).

It is no answer for Justice Stevens to say that the un derstanding that these official and quasi-official actions re flect was not “enshrined in the Constitution’s text.” Van Orden, ante, at 724 (dissenting opinion). The Establishment Clause, upon which Justice Stevens would rely, was en shrined in the Constitution’s text, and these official actions show what it meant. There were doubtless some who thought it should have a broader meaning, but those views were plainly rejected. Justice Stevens says that reliance on these actions is “bound to paint a misleading picture,” ibid., but it is hard to see why. What is more probative of the meaning of the Establishment Clause than the actions of [p. 897] the very Congress that proposed it, and of the first President charged with observing it?

Justice Stevens also appeals to the undoubted fact that some in the founding generation thought that the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment should have a narrower meaning, protecting only the Christian religion or perhaps only Protestantism. See Van Orden, ante, at 725–728. I am at a loss to see how this helps his case, except by pro viding a cloud of obfuscating smoke. (Since most thought the Clause permitted government invocation of monotheism, and some others thought it permitted government invocation of Christianity, he proposes that it be construed not to per mit any government invocation of religion at all.) At any rate, those narrower views of the Establishment Clause were as clearly rejected as the more expansive ones. Washing ton’s First Thanksgiving Proclamation is merely an example. All of the actions of Washington and the First Congress upon which I have relied, virtually all Thanksgiving Proclama tions throughout our history,5 and all the other examples of our Government’s favoring religion that I have cited, have invoked God, but not Jesus Christ.6 Rather than relying [p. 898] upon Justice Stevens’ assurance that “[t]he original under standing of the type of ‘religion’ that qualified for constitu tional protection under the Establishment Clause likely did not include . . . followers of Judaism and Islam,” Van Orden, ante, at 728; see also ante, at 880, I would prefer to take the word of George Washington, who, in his famous Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, wrote:

Finally, I must respond to Justice Stevens’ assertion that I would “marginaliz[e] the belief systems of more than 7 million Americans” who adhere to religions that are not monotheistic. Van Orden, ante, at 719, n. 18 (dissenting opinion). Surely that is a gross exaggeration. The beliefs of those citizens are entirely protected by the Free Exercise Clause, and by those aspects of the Establishment Clause that do not relate to government acknowledgment of the Creator. Invocation of God despite their beliefs is per mitted not because nonmonotheistic religions cease to be religions recognized by the Religion Clauses of the First [p. 900] Amendment, but because governmental invocation of God is not an establishment. Justice Stevens fails to recognize that in the context of public acknowledgments of God there are legitimate competing interests: On the one hand, the in terest of that minority in not feeling “excluded”; but on the other, the interest of the overwhelming majority of religious believers in being able to give God thanks and supplication as a people, and with respect to our national endeavors. Our national tradition has resolved that conflict in favor of the majority.8 It is not for this Court to change a disposition that accounts, many Americans think, for the phenomenon remarked upon in a quotation attributed to various authors, including Bismarck, but which I prefer to associate with Charles de Gaulle: “God watches over little children, drunk ards, and the United States of America.”

As bad as the Lemon test is, it is worse for the fact that, since its inception, its seemingly simple mandates have been manipulated to fit whatever result the Court aimed to achieve. Today’s opinion is no different. In two respects it modifies Lemon to ratchet up the Court’s hostility to reli gion. First, the Court justifies inquiry into legislative pur pose, not as an end itself, but as a means to ascertain the appearance of the government action to an “ ‘objective ob server.’ ” Ante, at 862. Because in the Court’s view the true danger to be guarded against is that the objective ob server would feel like an “ ‘outside[r]’ ” or “ ‘not [a] full mem be[r] of the political community,’ ” its inquiry focuses not on [p. 901] the actual purpose of government action, but the “purpose apparent from government action.” Ante, at 860. Under this approach, even if a government could show that its ac tual purpose was not to advance religion, it would presum ably violate the Constitution as long as the Court’s objective observer would think otherwise. See Capitol Square Re view and Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U. S. 753, 776–777 (1995) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (stating that “when the reasonable observer would view a government practice as endorsing religion, . . . it is our duty to hold the practice invalid,” even if the law at issue was neutral and the benefit conferred on the religious entity was incidental).

Second, the Court replaces Lemon’s requirement that the government have “a secular . . . purpose,” 403 U. S., at 612 (emphasis added), with the heightened requirement that the secular purpose “predominate” over any purpose to advance religion. Ante, at 864–865. The Court treats this exten sion as a natural outgrowth of the longstanding requirement that the government’s secular purpose not be a sham, but simple logic shows the two to be unrelated. If the govern ment’s proffered secular purpose is not genuine, then the government has no secular purpose at all. The new demand that secular purpose predominate contradicts Lemon’s more limited requirement, and finds no support in our cases. In all but one of the five cases in which this Court has invali dated a government practice on the basis of its purpose to [p. 902] benefit religion, it has first declared that the statute was mo tivated entirely by the desire to advance religion. See Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe, 530 U. S. 290, 308–309 (2000) (dismissing the school district’s proffered secular purposes as shams); Wallace, 472 U. S., at 56 (finding “no secular purpose” (emphasis in original)); Stone v. Graham, 449 U. S. 39, 41 (1980) (per curiam) (finding that “Kentucky’s statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school rooms has no secular legislative purpose” (em phasis added)); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 107–109 (1968). In Edwards, supra, the Court did say that the state action was invalid because its “primary” or “preeminent” purpose was to advance a particular religious belief, 482 U. S., at 590, 593, 594, but that statement was unnecessary to the result, since the Court rejected the State’s only proffered secular purpose as a sham. See id., at 589.

I have urged that Lemon’s purpose prong be abandoned, because (as I have discussed in Part I) even an exclusive purpose to foster or assist religious practice is not necessar ily invalidating. But today’s extension makes things even worse. By shifting the focus of Lemon’s purpose prong from the search for a genuine, secular motivation to the hunt for a predominantly religious purpose, the Court converts what has in the past been a fairly limited inquiry into a rigor ous review of the full record.9 Those responsible for the [p. 903] adoption of the Religion Clauses would surely regard it as a bitter irony that the religious values they designed those Clauses to protect have now become so distasteful to this Court that if they constitute anything more than a subor dinate motive for government action they will invalidate it.

Entitled “The Foundations of American Law and Govern ment Display,” each display consisted of nine equally sized documents: the original version of the Magna Carta, the Dec laration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Star Span gled Banner, the Mayflower Compact of 1620, a picture of Lady Justice, the National Motto of the United States (“In God We Trust”), the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, and the Ten Commandments. The displays did not empha size any of the nine documents in any way: The frame holding the Ten Commandments was of the same size and had the [p. 904] same appearance as that which held each of the other docu ments. See 354 F. 3d 438, 443 (CA6 2003).

¶4, App. 57. That the displays included the Ten Commandments did not transform their apparent secular purpose into one of impermissible ad vocacy for Judeo-Christian beliefs. Even an isolated display of the Decalogue conveys, at worst, “an equivocal message, perhaps of respect for Judaism, for religion in general, or for law.” Allegheny County, 492 U. S., at 652 (Stevens, J., [p. 905] concurring in part and dissenting in part). But when the Ten Commandments appear alongside other documents of secular significance in a display devoted to the foundations of American law and government, the context communicates that the Ten Commandments are included, not to teach their binding nature as a religious text, but to show their unique contribution to the development of the legal system. See id., at 652–653. This is doubly true when the display is in troduced by a document that informs passersby that it “ ‘con tains documents that played a significant role in the founda tion of our system of law and government.’ ” 354 F. 3d, at 443.

Acknowledgment of the contribution that religion has made to our Nation’s legal and governmental heritage par takes of a centuries-old tradition. Members of this Court have themselves often detailed the degree to which religious belief pervaded the National Government during the found ing era. See Lynch, supra, at 674–678; Marsh, supra, at 786–788; Lee v. Weisman, 505 U. S. 577, 633–636 (1992) (Scalia, J., dissenting); Wallace, 472 U. S., at 100–106 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S. 421, 446–450, and n. 3 (1962) (Stewart, J., dissenting). Display of the Ten Commandments is well within the mainstream of this practice of acknowledgment. Federal, state, and local governments across the Nation have engaged in such dis play.11 The Supreme Court Building itself includes depic tions of Moses with the Ten Commandments in the Court room and on the east pediment of the building, and symbols of the Ten Commandments “adorn the metal gates lining the north and south sides of the Courtroom as well as the doors leading into the Courtroom.” Van Orden, ante, at 688 (plu rality opinion). Similar depictions of the Decalogue appear [p. 907] on public buildings and monuments throughout our Nation’s Capital. Ante, at 689. The frequency of these displays tes tifies to the popular understanding that the Ten Command ments are a foundation of the rule of law, and a symbol of the role that religion played, and continues to play, in our system of government.

This inconsistency may be explicable in theory, but I sus pect that the “objective observer” with whom the Court is so concerned will recognize its absurdity in practice. By virtue of details familiar only to the parties to litigation and their lawyers, McCreary and Pulaski Counties, Kentucky, and Rutherford County, Tennessee, have been ordered to re move the same display that appears in courthouses from Mercer County, Kentucky, to Elkhart County, Indiana. Compare American Civil Liberties Union of Tenn. v. Ruth erford County, 209 F. Supp. 2d 799, 808–809 (MD Tenn. 2002) (holding Foundations Display to be unconstitutional based on prior actions of county commission), with Books v. Elkhart County, 401 F. 3d 857, 869 (CA7 2005) (sustaining Founda tions Display as “secular . . . in its purpose and effect”); American Civil Liberties Union of Ky. v. Mercer County, 219 F. Supp. 2d 777, 787–789 (ED Ky. 2002) (rejecting Estab lishment Clause challenge to an identical Foundations Dis play and distinguishing McCreary County on the ground [p. 908] that the County’s purpose had not been “tainted with any prior history”). Displays erected in silence (and under the direction of good legal advice) are permissible, while those hung after discussion and debate are deemed unconstitu tional. Reduction of the Establishment Clause to such mi nutiae trivializes the Clause’s protection against religious es tablishment; indeed, it may inflame religious passions by making the passing comments of every government official the subject of endless litigation.

The Court has in the past prohibited government actions that “proselytize or advance any one, or . . . disparage any other, faith or belief,” Marsh, 463 U. S., at 794–795, or that apply some level of coercion (though I and others have dis [p. 909] agreed about the form that coercion must take), see, e. g., Lee v. Weisman, 505 U. S., at 592 (prayer at high-school gradua tion invalid because of “subtle coercive pressure”); id., at 642 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The passive display of the Ten Commandments, even standing alone, does not begin to do either. What Justice Kennedy said of the cre` che in Alle gheny County is equally true of the Counties’ original Ten Commandments displays:

Turning at last to the displays actually at issue in this case, the Court faults the Counties for not repealing the resolution expressing what the Court believes to be an impermissible intent. Under these circumstances, the Court says, “[n]o reasonable observer could swallow the claim that the Coun ties had cast off the objective so unmistakable in the earlier displays.” Ante, at 872. Even were I to accept all that the Court has said before, I would not agree with that assess ment. To begin with, of course, it is unlikely that a reason able observer would even have been aware of the resolutions, so there would be nothing to “cast off.” The Court implies that the Counties may have been able to remedy the “taint” from the old resolutions by enacting a new one. See ante, at 871–872. But that action would have been wholly unnec essary in light of the explanation that the Counties included with the displays themselves: A plaque next to the docu ments informed all who passed by that each display “contains documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government.” Additionally, there was no reason for the Counties to repeal or repudiate the resolutions adopted with the hanging of the second displays, since they related only to the second displays. After com plying with the District Court’s order to remove the second displays “immediately,” and erecting new displays that in content and by express assertion reflected a different pur pose from that identified in the resolutions, the Counties had no reason to believe that their previous resolutions would be deemed to be the basis for their actions.14 After the Coun [p. 912] ties discovered that the sentiments expressed in the resolu tions could be attributed to their most recent displays (in oral argument before this Court), they repudiated them immediately.