Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
2,941 federal appellate · 1,773 district · 326 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9,458 later decisions (168 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), Allen v. Wright (1984)
2,941 federal appellate · 1,773 district · 326 state decisions — followed in 36 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedAmericans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc. v. United States Department of Health, Education & Welfare (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 20 U.S.C. § 3411 · 5 U.S.C. § 702
Relies on Warth v. Seldin · Baker v. Carr · Jones v. United States · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp.
Cited together with Warth v. Seldin · Allen v. Wright · Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization · Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood · Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 9,458 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“fairly can be traced to the challenged action”
629 later decisions quote this exact passage“(1) that the plaintiff have suffered an “injury in fact” — an invasion of a judicially cognizable interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) that there be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of — the injury must be fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant, and not the result of the independent action of some third party not before the court; and (3) that it be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.”
30 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.