Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
399 federal appellate · 138 district · 52 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,012 later decisions (26 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2004), McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky. (2005)
399 federal appellate · 138 district · 52 state decisions — followed in 11 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
reviewedDoe ex rel. Doe v. Santa Fe Independent School District (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Salerno · Lemon v. Kurtzman · Ward v. Rock Against Racism · Perry Education Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n · West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
Cited together with Lemon v. Kurtzman · County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union · Lynch v. Donnelly · Lee v. Weisman · School District of Abington Township Pennsylvania v. Schempp J Murray III
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 1,012 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
57 later decisions quote this exact passage“aware of the history and context of the community and forum in which the religious display appears,”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“reasonable observers have reasonable memories, and [Supreme Court] precedents sensibly forbid an observer `to turn a blind eye to the context in which [the display] arose.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.