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Religion
Everson v. Board of Education
Decided: 1947
In brief
Applied the Establishment Clause to the states and articulated the 'wall of separation' between church and state.
The Court's ruling in depth
Though it upheld a New Jersey program reimbursing bus fare to parochial-school students, Everson is monumental for what it said in the process: it incorporated the Establishment Clause against the states via the Fourteenth Amendment and adopted Jefferson's metaphor of a 'wall of separation' as its governing image. Every modern establishment-clause case begins with Everson.