Case Name: AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, and Micki Levin, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF BIRMINGHAM, Defendant-Appellant
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1986-06-11
Citations: 791 F.2d 1561
Docket Number: No. 84-1637
Parties: AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, and Micki Levin, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF BIRMINGHAM, Defendant-Appellant.
Judges: Before LIVELY, Chief Judge, and MERRITT and NELSON, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 791
Pages: 1561–1572

Head Matter:
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, and Micki Levin, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF BIRMINGHAM, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 84-1637.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Argued Feb. 27, 1986.
Decided June 11, 1986.
Jon H. Kingsepp, Beier, Howlett, Hayward, McConnell, McCann, Jones, King-sepp, Shea, Charles J. Porter (argued), Bloomfield Hills, Mich., for defendant-appellant.
Daniel J. Popeo, George Smith, Washington, D.C., amicus curiae (Washington Legal Foundation).
James Schuster, Robert A. Sedler (argued), Detroit, Mich., for plaintiffs-appel-lees.
Before LIVELY, Chief Judge, and MERRITT and NELSON, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
LIVELY, Chief Judge.
This First Amendment case involves the Christmastime display of a city-owned creche, or nativity scene, on the front lawn of the city hall of Birmingham, Michigan. Much of the argument before the district court concerned the application to this case of the Supreme Court's decision in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1984). In Lynch the Court found no First Amendment violation in Pawtucket, Rhode Island's inclusion of a city-owned creche in a seasonal display containing many familiar Christmas symbols such as decorated trees, candy striped poles and a Santa Claus house and reindeer-powered sleigh. The district court distinguished Lynch and held that the display violated the Establishment Clause. American Civil Liberties Union v. City of Bir mingham, 588 F.Supp. 1337 (E.D.Mich.1984).
I.
The facts are not in dispute. The district court stated the admitted facts as follows:
1. Annually, during the Christmas season, from approximately late November through early January of the following year, the City of Birmingham displays a nativity scene on the lawn of the Birmingham City Hall. The nativity scene is comprised of figurines depicting the Christ Child, the Mother Mary, Joseph, three costumed shepherds, and several lambs. Absolutely nothing else is included in the display.
2. In all matters herein, the defendant city was acting as a governmental unit under color of state law, custom or usage, by and through its functionaries, employees, agents or elected officials.
3. The nativity scene was displayed on public property in front of Birmingham City Hall, a place open to the general public. When not displayed on public property, it was stored on public property. The figures in the nativity scene were built at public expense, and the electricity used in connection with the display was furnished out of public funds. The nativity scene was cleaned, restored, repaired and maintained at public expense, and was dismantled and conveyed to storage by public employees at public expense.
588 F.Supp. 1338. The district court described the Christmas display challenged in Lynch and discussed the Supreme Court's holding as follows:
The Pawtucket display was situated in a park owned by a non-profit organization and was located in the heart of the Pawtucket shopping district. It consisted of many of the figures and decorations traditionally associated with the winter holiday season, including a Santa Clause [sic] house, reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh, candy-striped poles, a Christmas tree, carolers, cutout figures representing a clown, an elephant, and a teddy bear, a "SEASONS GREETINGS" banner and hundred of lights, as well as the nativity scene. The court in Lynch determined that the display was sponsored by the city of Pawtucket in order to celebrate the holiday season and to depict the origins of that holiday, and that there were legitimate secular purposes for the display. There being secular purposes for the display, the court found that there was no attempt by the defendant city to express any kind of subtle government advocacy of a particular religious message.
Although the Lynch opinion is replete with references to the significant role that religion has played in the development of our nation, it does not, either on its face or in any implicit proclamation, hold that a nativity scene standing alone, or that any other single religious symbol or group of such symbols erected on public property with public funds, complies with the requirements of the separation of church and state required by our Constitution.
Id. at 1338-39.
As the Supreme Court did in Lynch, the district court in the present case applied the three-part test of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 2111, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971), to determine whether a challenged practice is permitted:
First, the practice must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, it must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.
Id. at 1339.
The district court concluded that the Birmingham creche display failed all three prongs of the Lemon test. Emphasizing the absence of any nonreligious Christmas symbols in the Birmingham setting, the district court found no secular purpose for the display. In addition, the district court found it clear that the primary effect of the display "must be to advance, affirm, approve and otherwise validate the Christian religion, in that implicit government support of the religion represented by the sacred figures must be presumed by onlookers." Id. The district court found that the display failed the third Lemon test — excessive entanglement — because its purely religious character "might cause political divisiveness." Id.
II.
This appeal was well briefed by the parties and amici, and well argued. There is a temptation for the court to write too much in a case such as this, since the Establishment Clause has produced a confusing body of law, which is sometimes difficult to apply. Despite the absolute language employed by the authors of the First Amendment and Thomas Jefferson's metaphorical reference to the "wall" between church and state, the Supreme Court has approved many "accommodations" to the religious heritage of the nation.
The particular condition that the Founding Fathers sought to prohibit by inclusion of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment was the often tyrannical alliance between European governments and their official state religions. There was to be no established national church in the United States. However, the Establishment Clause was concerned with a larger evil, most often embodied in the establishment of official churches. The larger evil is government involvement in individual religious decisions. Every person must be free to make decisions in religious matters without any compulsion or interference by government. A statute or government practice that has the effect of impeding individuals from making free choices in religious matters by appearing either to embrace or reject a particular religion violates the Establishment Clause. This analysis seems consistent with that of Justice O'Connor, who concurred separately in Lynch, a 5 to 4 decision. Justice O'Connor stated the central issue in Lynch as whether the city endorsed Christianity by its display of the creche. After eliminating the issue of excessive entanglement, she approached the remaining two prongs of the Lemon test as follows:
The purpose prong of the Lemon test asks whether government's actual purpose is to endorse or disapprove of religion. The effect prong asks whether, irrespective of government's actual purpose, the practice under review in fact conveys a message of endorsement or disapproval. An affirmative answer to either question should render the challenged practice invalid.
Lynch, 465 U.S. at 690, 104 S.Ct. at 1368.
A majority of the Supreme Court appears to have adopted this approach. In Grand Rapids School District v. Ball, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 3216, 3226, 87 L.Ed.2d 267 (1985), Justice Brennan wrote for the Court:
Government promotes religion as effectively when it fosters a close identification of its powers and responsibilities with those of any — or all — religious denominations as when it attempts to inculcate specific religious doctrines. If this identification conveys a message of government endorsement or disapproval of religion, a core purpose of the Establishment Clause is violated. See Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 1366, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1984) (O'CONNOR, J., concurring).
(Citation omitted).
We will attempt the same approach in the present case.
III.
In support of the district court's holding, the plaintiffs point to differences between the facts in Lynch and those disclosed by the present record. In his opinion for the Lynch majority Chief Justice Burger described the Pawtucket Christmas display:
Each year, in cooperation with the downtown retail merchants' association, the city of Pawtucket, R.I., erects a Christmas display as part of its observance of the Christmas holiday season. The display is situated in a park owned by a nonprofit organization and located in the heart of the shopping district. The display is essentially like those to be found in hundreds of towns or cities across the Nation — often on public grounds — during the Christmas season. The Pawtucket display comprises many of the figures and decorations traditionally associated with Christmas, including, among other things, a Santa Claus house, reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh, candy-striped poles, a Christmas tree, carolers, cutout figures representing such characters as a clown, an elephant, and a teddy bear, hundreds of colored lights, a large banner that reads "SEASONS GREETINGS," and the créche at issue here. All components of this display are owned by the city.
The creche, which has been included in the display for 40 or more years, consists of the traditional figures, including the Infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph, angels, shepherds, kings, and animals, all ranging in height from 5" to 5'. In 1973, when the present creche was acquired, it cost the city $1,365; it now is valued at $200. The erection and dismantling of the creche costs the city about $20 per year; nominal expenses are incurred in lighting the créche. No money has been expended on its maintenance for the past 10 years.
465 U.S. at 671, 104 S.Ct. at 1358. The plaintiffs emphasize the repeated references in Lynch to the "inclusion" of the nativity scene within the larger display in contrast to the "unadorned" creche on the city hall lawn in the present case. They maintain that the primary effect of a nativity scene standing alone in a prominent position on city property is to send an unmistakable signal to observers that Christianity is officially endorsed by the city.
The city responds that the absence of other Christmas paraphernalia in the setting of the creche is unimportant. It was inclusion of the creche in the Christmas celebration that was approved in Lynch, not its inclusion in a display containing nonreligious Christmas symbols, the city asserts. The city concedes that the creche display "advances religion in a sense," but argues that this is merely an indirect and incidental effect of its inclusion in the observance of the national holiday. The holiday has a religious origin, which was recognized when Congress set aside that day for official observance. The inclusion of the symbol of this origin, according to the city, does nothing more to advance Christianity than the original decision to make Christmas a national holiday.
The city relies heavily on McCreary v. Stone, 739 F.2d 716 (2d Cir.1984), affirmed by an equally divided court sub nom. Board of Trustees of Village of Scarsdale v. McCreary, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 1859, 85 L.Ed.2d 63 (1985), a decision which the district court here declined to follow. In McCreary, the Village of Scarsdale, New York had permitted a civic group to place a creche in a city-owned park in the center of the business district for two weeks during the Christmas holiday season. The Scars-dale creche was placed on city-owned land, while the Pawtucket creche was displayed in a park owned by a private organization. Also, the Scarsdale creche was "unadorned," that is, it stood alone rather than as part of a larger display including secular symbols of the holiday. The Scarsdale dis play also contained a small disclaimer sign that read, "This creche has been erected and maintained solely by the Scarsdale Creche Committee, a private organization." When objections were voiced to this practice the city denied an application to display the creche during the 1983 holiday season. The district court upheld the city's action on First Amendment grounds, but the court of appeals reversed, finding that permitting the display did not have the direct and immediate effect of advancing religion. In McCreary, the Second Circuit found the factual differences between the Scarsdale case and Lynch unimportant.
The plaintiffs respond to this argument by pointing out that McCreary involved the denial of an application to place a creche in a park that was a recognized public forum, implicating freedom of speech as well as of worship. Further, while reversing, the court of appeals remanded to the district court to enter an order providing a larger, more visible sign, and concluded:
We believe that a proper disclaimer message — especially when coupled with the presence of the valid secular purpose, the lack of excessive entanglement, the Village's general grants of access to its public properties and the publicity the Village's official views have received in Scarsdale — will ensure that no reasonable person will draw an inference that the Village supports any church, faith or religion associated with the display of a creche during the Christmas season at Boniface Circle.
739 F.2d at 728. The plaintiffs argue that the public forum issue was critical to the decision in McCreary and that the result might well have been different without this factor and if there had been no disclaimer of city involvement.
IV.
The district court erred in concluding that the display in Birmingham had no secular purpose and that it fostered excessive government entanglement with religion.
A.
The Supreme Court made clear in Lynch that a totally secular purpose is not required. The City of Pawtucket was joining in the celebration of a national holiday and inclusion of the creche in the display served only to depict the historical origins of the celebration. 465 U.S. at 681, 104 S.Ct. at 1363. The same reasoning applies to the display in the present case. The City of Birmingham concedes that the nativity scene has religious significance. However, the city manager testified that the purpose of the display is "to be in keeping with the expression of the total community toward that period of the year." To him the creche was "just one element, an expression of joy, goodwill, that people have for one another in a community sense."
A statute or practice that is motivated in part by a religious purpose may satisfy the first Lemon criterion so long as it is not motivated entirely by a purpose to advance religion. Wallace v. Jaffree, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 2479, 2490, 86 L.Ed.2d 29 (1985). Given the holding in Lynch we cannot find that inclusion of the creche in the celebration of Christmas as a national holiday was devoid of all secular purpose. The record does not support a finding that the "actual purpose" of displaying the creche was to endorse religion. Lynch, 465 U.S. at 690, 104 S.Ct. at 1367. (O'Connor, J., concurring).
B.
In Lynch the Supreme Court also made it clear that in the absence of excessive administrative entanglement fostered by the challenged government action, political divisiveness alone cannot render otherwise permissible official conduct invalid. Other than the present lawsuit, apparently no complaints had been registered about the Birmingham creche. Since the city owned the creche and no church or other religious entity was involved in the annual display, there was no evidence of entanglement. The district court erred as a matter of law in finding that the city failed to satisfy the third prong of the Lemon test.
V.
Our most difficult problem is to determine whether the effect of the creche in the Birmingham setting was to endorse Christianity. The fact that the display "advances religion in a sense" is not controlling. Lynch, 465 U.S. at 683, 104 S.Ct. at 1364. More pertinent is the question whether any benefit to religion from the display is direct and immediate, or only "indirect, remote, and incidental." Id.
In Lynch the Supreme Court stated that the district court erred in "focusing almost exclusively on the creche," and cautioned that the display must be viewed "in the proper context of the Christmas Holiday season." 465 U.S. at 680, 104 S.Ct. at 1362. Given that the City of Birmingham had a secular purpose for displaying the creche— to promote a feeling of joy and goodwill— our remaining inquiry is whether the display did in fact convey a message of endorsement of Christianity.
The Birmingham city hall display called attention to a single aspect of the Christmas holiday — its religious origin. A creche standing alone without any of the nonreligious symbols of Christmas affirms the most fundamental of Christian beliefs— that the birth of Jesus was not just another historical event. Rather, to the believer Christ's birth was an act of divine intervention in human affairs that set this birth apart from all others. The same witness who described the city's secular purpose stated that the creche "is consistent with the recognition of the Christmas Day, Holiday that's granted and the significance of that date as being the birth of the Christ Child." He also testified, "There are Nativity Scenes in every church around"; "[t]he Nativity Scene, whether it be at City Hall or any other place does have a religious significance to me."
This reaction to the creche is normal, and presumably universal. The creche has no other significance or message — it is a purely religious symbol. When surrounded by a multitude of secular symbols of Christmas, a nativity scene may do no more than remind an observer that the holiday has a religious origin. But when the nonreligious trappings — accretions of the centuries — are stripped away, there remains only the universally recognized symbol for the central affirmation of a single religion— Christianity. To the extent that the McCreary court's decision may be read to hold that a city may place a creche unaccompanied by any nonreligious symbols of the holiday in a prominent position on the lawn of the official headquarters building of the municipal government, we disagree.
Since the majority does not need its protections, the Bill of Rights was adopted for the benefit and protection of minorities. From the beginning, Christians have constituted a majority in America and non-Christians are acutely aware of this fact. Their assurance of equality before the law, despite their religious nonconformance, derives from the guarantees of the First Amendment. It is difficult to believe that the city's practice of displaying an unadorned creche on the city hall lawn would not convey to a non-Christian a message that the city endorses Christianity. The creche, thus displayed,
sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.
Lynch, 465 U.S. at 688, 104 S.Ct. at 1366 (O'Connor, J., concurring).
We have not overlooked the admonition in Lynch to view the creche "in the proper context of the Christmas Holiday season." In Lynch the city's observance of the season consisted of the use of a wide variety of secular symbols of the season. Justice O'Connor noted, "The creche is a traditional symbol of the holiday that is very commonly displayed along with purely secular symbols, as it was in Pawtucket." 465 U.S. at 692, 104 S.Ct. at 1369 (emphasis added). Set in the midst of such a display the nativity scene might be held to do no more than remind an observer that this season of feasting and gift-giving has a religious origin. Thus, the Court wrote, "The creche in the display depicts the historical origins of this traditional event long recognized as a National Holiday." Lynch, 465 U.S. at 680, 104 S.Ct. at 1362 (emphasis added). In our opinion, the city-owned and city-sponsored nativity scene sends quite a different message when it stands alone as the only clearly identifiable symbol chosen by the city to mark its contribution to the celebration. The direct and immediate effect of such a display is endorsement of a particular religion.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
. The only other city decorations consisted of natural bough wreaths and approximately 1000 strings of lights placed on city trees and buildings in the business district of Birmingham.