A divided U.S. Supreme Court narrowly rejected a taxpayer lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's efforts to extend more federal funding to faith-based initiatives for social programs like those the government aids when they are run by secular agencies.

"If every federal taxpayer could sue to challenge any government expenditure, the federal courts would cease to function as courts of law and would be cast in the role of general complaint bureaus," said Justice Samuel Alito, writing the main opinion in the court's 5-4 ruling.

Two justices joined his opinion and two others concurred in the judgment but not in the opinion. Four justices dissented.

In its ruling the court said the Freedom From Religion Foundation and three of its members, in their role as taxpayers, did not have discernible personal harm that would give them standing to challenge the administration's use of federal funds to ensure that faith-based organizations are eligible to compete with others for federal financial support.

It said a 1968 court decision permitting a taxpayer lawsuit to challenge a congressional action authorizing funding for religiously run schools is not applicable because "Congress did not specifically authorize" the executive branch actions in question.

The high court reversed a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that recognized the plaintiffs as having standing. That court had overturned the decision of a lower court that denied standing.

The plaintiffs had argued that when the executive branch used federal funds appropriated by Congress to hold conferences praising faith-based organizations and encouraging them to participate in federally funded programs, it was a violation of the Constitution's Establishment Clause.

President George W. Bush established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives by executive order in December 2002. In essence, the program is designed to give religiously run organizations equal footing with secular groups in eligibility for federal funding for programs they run to help the poor and needy.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation contended that conferences and speeches administration officials gave to promote the initiative and to encourage participation by faith-based groups were "propaganda vehicles for religion" in violation of the Constitution's Establishment Clause.

The high court's ruling, denying legal standing to the plaintiffs to pursue the lawsuit, addressed only the narrow issue of whether taxpayers have legal standing to go to court to challenge executive branch actions that are not mandated by Congress but funded only indirectly through general appropriations.

The question of standing is one of the core procedural principles of the U.S. judicial system. Under judicial rules, if the plaintiff has no legal standing to sue, the court has no jurisdiction over the case.

Generally no one has such standing just by virtue of being a taxpayer, but plaintiffs relied on a narrow exception the Supreme Court established in 1968 in Flast v. Cohen, which said a federal taxpayer could challenge the constitutionality of an exercise of congressional spending or taxing power that violated the Establishment Clause.

In the current case, Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Supreme Court ruled that the Flast exception does not apply, since in this case "Congress did not specifically authorize the use of federal funds to pay for the conferences or speeches that the plaintiffs challenged."

Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined in Justice Samuel Alito's opinion that the discretionary executive use of general congressional appropriations does not come under the Flast ruling, which specifically addresses an act of Congress that would establish religion, in violation of the limits on congressional taxing and spending imposed by the Constitution.

In a separate concurring opinion, Kennedy added that if the court allowed the Freedom From Religion Foundation complaint to go to trial it would lead to "intrusive and unremitting judicial management of the way the executive branch performs its duties."

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, concurred with the judgment of the other three but said the problem was with the Flast ruling in 1968.

The taxpayer standing that was permitted in the Flast case was a mistake, Scalia said, and the court should have taken this opportunity to correct it. "Flast should be overruled," he said.

Justice David H. Souter, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, dissented.

"The controlling opinion closes the door on these taxpayers because the executive branch, and not the legislative branch, caused their injury," Souter wrote. "I see no basis for this distinction in either logic or precedent, and respectfully dissent."

---CNS