Two clauses in the First Amendment guarantee freedom of religion. The establishment clause prohibits the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion to another. It enforces the "separation of church and state". The free exercise clause prohibits the government, in most instances, from interfering with a person's practice of their religion.

In determining weather the a governmental practice is violate the First Amendment Establishment Clause, the Courts have developed the "Lemon Test." The Lemon Test organized in the Court's 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman, is a three-pronged inquiry: 1) Does the challenged legislation or activities have a legitimate secular purpose? 2) Does the legislation or activity have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion? and 3) Does the legislation or activity excessively entangle government with religion?

Several cases that demonstrate the use of the

Galen Black and Alfred Smith were fired by a private drug rehabilitation organization because they ingested peyote, a hallucinogenic drug, for sacramental purposes at a ceremony of their Native American Church. They claim for a religious exemption from the Oregon law cannot be evaluated under the balancing test set forth in the line of cases following Sherbert v. Verner, whereby governmental actions that significantly burden a religious practice must be justified by a "compelling governmental interest."

Lemon Test are Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District argued February 24, 1993 -- Decided June 18, 1993. The issued raised was whether the State may refuse to pay for a deaf child's sign language interpreter in a parochial school. The school district has successfully argued in the U.S. District Court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) that permitting a government-funded interpreter to work in a Catholic school would have the primary effect of advancing religion by constituting public aid to a religious institution, which violates the effects prong of the Lemon test. It was also held that paying for the sign language interpreter in a Catholic school would create, in the eyes of Zobrest's Catholic schoolmates, a "symbolic union" of church and state, which violates the entanglement prong of the Lemon test.

The Court's standard

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