Westside Community Board of Education v. Mergens

Westside Community Board of Education v. Mergens
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 9, 1990 Decided June 4, 1990
Full case name	Board of Education of the Westside Community Schools, etc., et al., Petitioners v. Bridget C. Mergens, by and through her next friend, Daniel N. Mergens, et al.
Citations	496 U.S. 226 (more) 110 S. Ct. 2356; 110 L. Ed. 2d 191; 1990 U.S. LEXIS 2880; 58 U.S.L.W. 4720
Case history
Prior	867 F.2d 1076 (8th Cir. 1989); cert. granted, 492 U.S. 917 (1989).
Holding
School districts may not prohibit Bible study groups from meeting on school premises if they allow other groups to meet on school premises.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy
Case opinions
Majority	O'Connor (parts I, II-A, II-B, II-C), joined by Rehnquist, White, Blackmun, Scalia, Kennedy
Plurality	O'Connor (part III), joined by Rehnquist, White, Blackmun
Concurrence	Kennedy, joined by Scalia
Concurrence	Marshall, joined by Brennan
Dissent	Stevens
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I; Equal Access Act

Westside Community Board of Education v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court case involving a school district's ability to hold classes on Bible study after school.

Background

Westside High School, in District 66, located in Omaha, Nebraska, refused to allow a group of students to form a Christian Bible Study Club within their school. Bridget Mergens is the name of the student who initiated the process to start the club. She was a senior at the time. It was decided that the club could not take place because they would not allow a staff member to sponsor it (staff sponsoring was required or the club meetings could not take place at the school). The students argued that the district's decision was in violation of the federal Equal Access Act requiring that groups seeking to express messages containing "religious, political, philosophical, or other content" not be denied the ability to form clubs.

Opinion of the Court

In an 8–1 decision,^[1] the Court held that denying equal access to the religious club violated the Equal Access Act, and that treating a religious club equally, including providing a sponsor like other clubs, would not constitute an endorsement of religion prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.^[2]

The school's situation was placed under the Equal Access Act because it allowed other ‘limited open forums’. In Part III of Justice O'Connor's opinion, which did not reach a majority of the Court, she applied the Lemon Test to find that the Equal Access Act is constitutional as applied in this case. Justice Kennedy, meanwhile, analyzed the application of the Act under different Court precedents, focusing more upon "coercion".

Dissent

Justice Stevens, in a dissenting opinion, would have avoided the Establishment Clause issue.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 496
• List of United States Supreme Court cases
• Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume
• List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Rehnquist Court

References

External links

• Text of Westside Community Board of Education v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226 (1990) is available from: Cornell  CourtListener  Google Scholar  Justia  Library of Congress  Oyez (oral argument audio)