# Roemer v. Board of Public Works of Md.

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 21, 1976 · 426 U.S. 736

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426476

## Case

- **Full name:** ROEMER Et Al. v. BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS OF MARYLAND Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 21, 1976
- **Citations:** 426 U.S. 736; 96 S. Ct. 2337; 49 L. Ed. 2d 179; 1976 U.S. LEXIS 70
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Stevens
- **Judges:** BlacemuN, Blackmun, Brennan, Burger, Stevens, Stewart, White
- **Cited by:** 327 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Questioned by Employment Security Administration v. Baltimore Lutheran High School Ass'n, 291 Md. 750 (1981).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426476

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding that annual aid payments to a religious university are constitutional because there is no impermissible effect when the institution is not "so permeated by religion" that secular cannot be separated from religious instruction
- finding no excessive entanglement where the government's contacts with a religiously-affiliated college were "not likely to be any more entangling than the inspections and audits incident to the normal process of colleges' accreditations by the State"
- holding there was no excessive entanglement where State conducts annual audits to ensure that categorical state grants to religious colleges are not used to teach religion
- finding that state-funded grants to private colleges did not violate the Establishment Clause, in part because use of the grants was restricted to non-sectarian purposes

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Stevens,
dissenting.
My views are substantially those expressed by Mr. Justice Brennan. However, I would add emphasis to the pernicious tendency of a state subsidy to tempt religious schools to compromise their religious mission without wholly abandoning it. The disease of entanglement may infect a law discouraging wholesome religious activity as well as a law encouraging the propagation of a given faith.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426476. Public record. Not legal advice.