# Lynch v. Donnelly

> Supreme Court of the United States · March 5, 1984 · 465 U.S. 668

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9429522

## Case

- **Full name:** LYNCH, MAYOR OF PAWTUCKET, Et Al. v. DONNELLY Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** March 5, 1984
- **Citations:** 465 U.S. 668; 52 U.S.L.W. 4317; 104 S. Ct. 1355; 79 L. Ed. 2d 604; 1984 U.S. LEXIS 37
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Blackmun
- **Judges:** Burger, White, Powell, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
- **Cited by:** 1,003 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9429522

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding that a creche display did not give rise to impermissible entanglement when there “is no evidence of contact with church authorities concerning the content or design of the exhibit .... No expenditures for maintenance of the creche have been necessary .... In many respe…
- stating that ”[t]he purpose prong of the Lemon test asks whether [the] govern-merit's actual purpose is to endorse or disapprove of religion. The effect prong asks whether, irrespective of government’s actual purpose, the practice under review in fact conveys a message of endo…
- finding that a city’s inclusion of a Nativity scene in a holiday display amongst several other, secular displays did not violate the Establishment Clause because the purpose of including the Nativity scene was to celebrate the Christmas holiday and depict its origins
- recognizing “the Court’s emphasis that the First Congress ‘was a Congress whose constitutional decisions have always been regarded, as they should be regarded, as of the greatest weight in the interpretation of that fundamental instruction’”
- stating that “[ejvery government practice must be judged in its unique circumstances to determine whether it [endorses] religion” and observing that evidentiary submissions aid the court in answering this legal question

## Opinion text

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Stevens joins, dissenting.
As Justice Brennan points out, the logic of the Court’s decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 612-613 (1971) (which The Chief Justice would say has been applied by this Court “often,” ante, at 679, but which Justice O’Connor acknowledges with the words, “Our prior cases have used the three-part test articulated in Lemon,” ante, at 688), compels an affirmance here. If that case and its guidelines mean anything, the presence of Pawtucket’s créche in a municipally sponsored display must be held to be a violation of the First Amendment.
Not only does the Court’s resolution of this controversy make light of our precedents, but also, ironically, the majority does an injustice to the créche and the message it manifests. While certain persons, including the Mayor of Pawtucket, undertook a crusade to “keep ‘Christ’ in Christmas,” App. 161, the Court today has declared that presence virtually irrelevant. The majority urges that the display, “with or without a créche,” “recall[s] the religious nature of the Holiday,” and “engenders a friendly community spirit of goodwill in keeping with the season.” Ante, at 685. Before the District Court, an expert witness for the city made *727 a similar, though perhaps more candid, point, stating that Pawtucket’s display invites people “to participate in the Christmas spirit, brotherhood, peace, and let loose with their money.” See 525 F. Supp. 1150, 1161 (RI 1981). The créche has been relegated to the role of a neutral harbinger of the holiday season, useful for commercial purposes, but devoid of any inherent meaning and incapable of enhancing the religious tenor of a display of which it is an integral part. The city has its victory — but it is a Pyrrhic one indeed.
The import of the Court’s decision is to encourage use of the créche in a municipally sponsored display, a setting where Christians feel constrained in acknowledging its symbolic meaning and non-Christians feel alienated by its presence. Surely, this is a misuse of a sacred symbol. Because I cannot join the Court in denying either the force of our precedents or the sacred message that is at the core of the créche, I dissent and join Justice Brennan’s opinion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9429522. Public record. Not legal advice.