Sentences with phrase «secular purpose»

The law would have a clear secular purpose — preserving high - quality education options for needy students.

In my view, a statute outlawing employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin has the valid secular purpose of assuring employment opportunity to all groups in our pluralistic society.

Those government acknowledgments of religion serve, in the only ways reasonably possible in our culture, the legitimate secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions, expressing confidence in the future, and encouraging the recognition of what is worthy of appreciation in society.

And some of those who should be most concerned have a thoroughly secular purpose: education reformers struggling to narrow the divide in academic achievement between wealthy students and poor students, and especially between white children and minorities in urban schools.

The majority ruled that since the vouchers advance a legitimate secular purpose (educating disadvantaged students), may be used at any private school (secular or religious), and support religious institutions only through individual choice, the program does not offend the establishment clause.

Although India has adopted the Gregorian calendar for secular purposes, Hindu observances are governed by the traditional Hindu calendar.

Guess he should be suing the US Government next because a federal judge has also ruled that ID is not science, it has a purely religious agenda and it has no secular purpose (look up Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District).

Government action violates the Constitution if it: (1) has no «secular purpose»; (2) has a «primary effect» that «advances religion»; or (3) entails an «excessive entanglement between church and state.»

This untoward result - interpreting a Constitution intended to guarantee religious liberty as requiring affirmative discrimination against people of faith - would seem to be the necessary result of a doctrine of separation that invalidates government action that lacks a «secular purpose» or has the effect of «advanc [ing]... religion» (Lemon v. Kurtzman [1970]-RRB-.

That is why nowadays we defend Sunday closing laws (if at all) by the secular purpose of encouraging a general day of rest and recreation rather than the original purpose of honoring the Lord's Day or maximizing church attendance.

I know: you're stunned — a day of joint thanksgiving for a secular purpose, and that I'll wrap my arms around.

As such it serves — «clearly» and «solely» — a «secular purpose.»

In other words if this «God» who is met in no monotheistic faith, who serves a «solely... secular purpose» and is located only in the past should somehow attempt to be present, to guide or to intervene in the affairs of those reciting the pledge, that «God» (who sounds rather like the God of the Bible and Christianity) would be distinctly unwelcome.

He held that «the religious nature of the recipient should not matter to the constitutional analysis, so long as the recipient adequately furthers the government's secular purpose.»

I believe it should not be pursued by surrendering what is distinctive in the Christian heritage to the service of secular purposes.

As White expressed it, the potential for impermissible fostering of religion in secular classrooms — an untested, assumption of the court, so far as he was concerned — paradoxically rendered unacceptable the state's efforts to ensure that secular teachers under religious discipline would successfully avoid conflicts between the religious mission of the school and the secular purpose of the state's education program.

Although even the plaintiffs conceded that the ESA has a secular purpose and that parents may expend all of their ESA funds on secular education, they contended that the potential that parents might use ESA funds to pay tuition at a religious school or purchase religious homeschool materials was a violation of the Blaine Amendment.

For example, in 2013 the Indiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld a voucher law because the law served a secular purpose and the funds were allocated to parents.

To pass the test, the program must have a legitimate secular purpose, offer aid directly to parents, cover a broad class of students, be neutral on religion, and there must be enough nonreligious options available for those who want them.

Because the program is neutral with regards to religion and, as the trial court found, has the secular purpose of expanding educational opportunity, there is no constitutional violation.

First, the majority found that the law served a secular purpose by «providing educational assistance to poor children.»

Likewise, the lower court rejected the ACLU's Blaine Amendment claim, holding that it «was not intended to preclude any expenditure that has an incidental benefit to religion, where such is made for a primary secular purpose,» and that the ESA «was enacted for the valid secular purpose of providing financial assistance to parents to take advantage of educational options available to Nevada children.»

Our guide pointed to many small details about the facade of the temple, including signs it was temporarily converted to a Christian church, thus sparing it from destruction over the years (later, during the French Revolution, it was used for secular purposes, once again thankfully helping it to avoid destruction).

(f) This Court rejects appellants» contention that the State has other means at its disposal to accomplish its secular purpose that would not even remotely or incidentally give state aid to religion.

The provisions of Title VII must therefore manifest a valid secular purpose and effect to be valid under the Establishment Clause.

The Court's summary rejection of a secular purpose articulated by the legislature and confirmed by the state court is without precedent in Establishment Clause jurisprudence.