Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
400 federal appellate · 110 district · 38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,051 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Agostini v. Felton Chancellor Board of Education of the City of New York (1997), Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of University of Virginia (1995)
400 federal appellate · 110 district · 38 state decisions — followed in 10 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 20 U.S.C. § 4071 (The Equal Access Act) · 28 U.S.C. § 2403 · 42 U.S.C. § 2000E (§ 703 of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
Relies on Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District · Lemon v. Kurtzman · Meyer v. State of Nebraska
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · Widmar v. Vincent · Lynch v. Donnelly · County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union · Lee v. Weisman
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 1,051 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It shall be unlawful for any public secondary school which receives Federal financial assistance and which has a limited open forum to deny equal access or a fair opportunity to, or discriminate against, any students who wish to conduct a meeting within that limited open forum on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.”
46 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“there is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[I]f a State refused to let religious groups use facilities open to others, then it would demonstrate not neutrality but hostility toward religion.”
23 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.