Kendrick v. Bowen, 15 April 1987, modified on 15 May 1987

Abstract

The plaintiffs, federal taxpayers, challenged the constitutionality of the Adolescent Family Life Act, 42 U.S.C. Sections 300z-300z-10 (1981), provisions of which allow religious organizations to use government funds for, among other things, the counseling and teaching of adolescents on matters related to premarital sexual relations and teenage pregnancy. They claimed that these provisions violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." While the Court held that the Act had a valid secular purpose of combating teenage pregnancy and associated ills, it also ruled that it violated the Constitution because on its face and as applied it had the primary effect of advancing religion. It pointed to the fact that the Act funded the teaching and counseling of adolescents by religious organizations on matters related to religious doctrine, that Act grantees included several organizations with institutional ties to religious denominations, and that some grantees established programmes in which Act-funded staffer presentations were immediately followed in the same room and in the staffers' presence by programs presented by members of religious orders and dedicated to the presentation of religious views.