Fellowship of Humanity V. County of Alameda - Significance

Significance

Along with Washington Ethical Society v. District of Columbia, this was one of the earliest cases establishing the right in the U.S. of nontheistic institutions that function like traditional theistic religious institutions to be treated similarly to theistic religious institutions under the law.

This case was cited by Justice Hugo Black in the decision for Torcaso v. Watkins, in an obiter dictum listing "secular humanism" as being among "religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God."

Black's statement was somewhat misleading in that Fellowship of Humanity v. County of Alameda did not address the question of whether the secular humanist ideas of the Fellowship of Humanity were religious; it merely determined that Fellowship of Humanity functioned like a church and so was entitled to similar protections. Subsequent cases such as Peloza v. Capistrano School District have clarified that "neither the Supreme Court, nor this circuit, has ever held that evolutionism or secular humanism are 'religions' for Establishment Clause purposes." Unlike the question of tax exemption, Establishment Clause issues rest on whether or not ideas themselves are primarily religious.

The decision for a subsequent case, Kalka v. Hawk et al., offered this commentary:

The Court's statement in Torcaso does not stand for the proposition that humanism, no matter in what form and no matter how practiced, amounts to a religion under the First Amendment. The Court offered no test for determining what system of beliefs qualified as a "religion" under the First Amendment. The most one may read into the Torcaso footnote is the idea that a particular non-theistic group calling itself the "Fellowship of Humanity" qualified as a religious organization under California law.