Flast v. Cohen

Flast v. Cohen
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 12, 1968 Decided June 10, 1968
Full case name	Flast et al. v. Cohen, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare et al.
Citations	392 U.S. 83 (more) 88 S. Ct. 1942; 20 L. Ed. 2d 947; 1968 U.S. LEXIS 1347
Case history
Prior	Three-judge court convened, Flast v. Gardner, 267 F. Supp. 351 (S.D.N.Y. 1967); dismissed for lack of standing, Flast v. Gardner, 271 F. Supp. 1 (S.D.N.Y. 1967); probable jurisdiction noted, 389 U.S. 895 (1967).
Holding
Federal taxpayers have standing to sue to prevent the disbursement of federal funds in contravention of the specific constitutional prohibition against government support of religion.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan Jr. Potter Stewart · Byron White Abe Fortas · Thurgood Marshall
Case opinions
Majority	Warren, joined by Black, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, White, Fortas, Marshall
Concurrence	Douglas
Concurrence	Stewart
Concurrence	Fortas
Dissent	Harlan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Art. I, Sec. 8, Art. III

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Flast v. Cohen

Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968), was a United States Supreme Court case holding that federal taxpayers have standing to seek relief from the courts for claims that federal tax money is being used for unconstitutional purposes in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.^[1]

The Supreme Court decided in Frothingham v. Mellon (1923), that a taxpayer did not have standing to sue the federal government to prevent expenditures if his only injury is an anticipated increase in taxes. Frothingham v. Mellon did not recognize a constitutional barrier against federal taxpayer lawsuits. Rather, it denied standing because the petitioner did not allege "a breach by Congress of the specific constitutional limitations imposed upon an exercise of the taxing and spending power." Because the purpose of standing is to avoid burdening the court with situations in which there is no real controversy, standing is used to ensure that the parties in the suit are properly adversarial, "not whether the issue itself is justiciable."

In 1968, Florance Flast joined several others in filing a lawsuit against Wilbur Cohen, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, contending that spending funds on religious schools violated the First Amendment's ban on the establishment of religion. The district court denied standing, and the Supreme Court heard the appeal.