In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, … See more

Constitutions of Clarendon
The Constitutions of Clarendon, a 12th-century English law, had prohibited criminal defendants' using religious laws (at that … See more

Prior to the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1868, the Supreme Court generally held that the substantive protections of the Bill of Rights did not apply to state governments. Subsequently, by the See more

Prior to American independence, most of the original colonies supported religious activities with taxes, with several colonies choosing a single church as its official religion. These official churches enjoyed privileges not granted to other religious groups. See more

Further important decisions came in the 1960s, during the Warren Court era. One of the Court's most controversial decisions came in Engel v. Vitale in 1962. The case involved the mandatory daily recitation by public school officials of a prayer written by the New York … See more

The inclusion of religious symbols in public holiday displays came before the Supreme Court in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), and again in Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh ACLU (1989). In the former case, the Court upheld the public display of a See more

In the 1964 case McGowan v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that blue laws which restricted the sale of goods on Sundays (and were originally intended to increase Church attendance) did not violate the Establishment Clause because they served a … See more