In Bowen v. Kendrick, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA). AFLA supplied grants to public and non-profit organizations for the provision of counseling services and education to adolescents regarding premarital sexual relations. AFLA funds could not be used for family planning services, to provide abortions or abortion counseling, or to advocate or encourage abortion. A group of taxpayers, clergymen, and the American Jewish Congress filed a suit alleging that AFLA violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court applied its test developed in Lemon v. Kurtzman, and it concluded that AFLA was constitutional on its face. First, the Court found that AFLA had a valid secular purpose; the history of AFLA indicated that its purpose was to eliminate or reduce social and economic problems caused by teenage sexuality, pregnancy, and parenthood. While AFLA provided grants to religious as well as secular groups, this was done only to increase broad-based community involvement in an important secular issue. Second, AFLA did not promote or inhibit religion because the services it funds are not religious in nature, and the requirements for receiving funds were the same for both religious and purely secular applicants. Third, while AFLA did require a monitoring program to ensure that the funding was spent in compliance with Congress’s intent and the requirements of the Establishment Clause, the Court held that that the limited nature of such grant-monitoring does not rise to the level of monitoring programs found unconstitutional in the context of purely sectarian religious schools.
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