Cite as: 530 U. S. 290 (2000)
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
The Court, venturing into the realm of prophecy, decides that it "need not wait for the inevitable" and invalidates the district's policy on its face. See ante, at 316. To do so, it applies the most rigid version of the oft-criticized test of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971).1
Lemon has had a checkered career in the decisional law of this Court. See, e. g., Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384, 398-399 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (collecting opinions criticizing Lemon); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 108-114 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (stating that Lemon's "three-part test represents a determined effort to craft a workable rule from a historically faulty doctrine; but the rule can only be as sound as the doctrine it attempts to service" (internal quotation marks omitted)); Committee for Public Ed. and Religious Liberty v. Regan, 444 U. S. 646, 671 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (deriding "the sisyphean task of trying to patch together the blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier described in Lemon"). We have even gone so far as to state that it has never been binding on us. Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 679 (1984) ("[W]e have repeatedly emphasized our unwillingness to be confined to any single test or criterion in this sensitive area. . . . In two cases, the Court did not even apply the Lemon 'test' [citing Marsh
1 The Court rightly points out that in facial challenges in the Establishment Clause context, we have looked to Lemon's three factors to "guid[e] [t]he general nature of our inquiry." Ante, at 314 (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U. S. 589, 602 (1988)). In Bowen, we looked to Lemon as such a guide and determined that a federal grant program was not invalid on its face, noting that "[i]t has not been the Court's practice, in considering facial challenges to statutes of this kind, to strike them down in anticipation that particular applications may result in unconstitutional use of funds." 487 U. S., at 612 (internal quotation marks omitted). But here the Court, rather than looking to Lemon as a guide, applies Lemon's factors stringently and ignores Bowen's admonition that mere anticipation of unconstitutional applications does not warrant striking a policy on its face.
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