Opinion ID: 805319
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Religious Coercion

Text: In addition to impermissibly endorsing religion, the District’s decision to use Elmbrook Church for graduations was religiously coercive under Lee and Santa Fe. In Lee, the Supreme Court invalidated a school district’s practice of including benedictions at high school graduations, and highlighted two dominant facts. 505 U.S. at 58586. First, state officials were directing the performance of a formal religious exercise at a graduation ceremony. Id. Second, graduation ceremonies were effectively obligatory even if attendance was technically voluntary. Id. After examining the totality of the circumstances, Lee, 505 U.S. at 597 (emphasizing the fact-sensitive nature of the inquiry), the Court concluded that the conformity required by the graduation ceremony “was too high an exaction to withstand the test of the Establishment Clause.” Id. at 598. The same basic concern was evident in the Court’s discussions in Santa Fe, where the Supreme Court rejected student-led prayer at football games. 530 U.S. at 301. The Court noted that while football games may not be as “extraordinary” in terms of life impact as graduation ceremonies, “the choice between attending these games and avoiding personally offensive religious rituals is in no practical sense an easy one” for some No. 10-2922 31 students, and thus the principles in Lee governed. Id. at 311-12. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Lee and Santa Fe cannot be meaningfully distinguished from the case at bar on the ground that the school district did not coerce overt religious activity. Lee, 505 U.S. at 605 n.6 (Blackmun, J., concurring) (observing that as a practical matter “any time the government endorses a religious belief there will almost always be some pressure to conform”). Although Lee and Santa Fe focus on the problem of coerced religious activity, it is a mistake to view the coercion at issue in those cases as divorced from the problem of government endorsement of religion in the classroom generally. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin: “When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain.” Wallace, 472 U.S. at 60 n.51 (alteration omitted) (quoting Engel, 370 U.S. at 430). And governmental efforts at shaping religious views may prove effective over time. Lee, 505 U.S. at 592; cf. also A Letter to Richard Burke, Esq., on Protestant Ascendency in Ireland, in vol. VI W ORKS OF THE R IGHT H ONORABLE E DMUND B URKE 395 (rev. ed. 1866) (“Man and his con- science cannot always be at war.”). The fact that graduation attendees need not do anything but participate in the graduation ceremony and take advantage of religious offerings if they so choose does not rescue the practice. 32 No. 10-2922 Further, there is an aspect of coercion here. It is axiomatic that “[n]either a state nor the Federal Government . . . can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will.” Everson v. Bd. of Educ. of Ewing Twp., 330 U.S. 1, 15 (1947). The first principle is violated when the government directs students to attend a pervasively Christian, proselytizing environment. Cf. Cnty. of Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 664 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (observing in the context of creche displays that “[p]assersby who disagree with [their] message[s] . . . are free to ignore them, or even to turn their backs, just as they are free to do when they disagree with any other form of government speech”); Wallace, 472 U.S. at 72 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (noting that under an appropriately crafted moment of silence law a student “who objects to prayer . . . is not compelled to listen to the prayers or thoughts of others”). Once the school district creates a captive audience, the coercive potential of endorsement can operate. When a student who holds minority (or no) religious beliefs observes classmates at a graduation event taking advantage of Elmbrook Church’s offerings or meditating on its symbols (or posing for pictures in front of them) or speaking with its staff members, “[t]he law of imitation operates,” Wallace, 472 U.S. at 60 n.51, and may create subtle pressure to honor the day in a similar manner. See also id. at 81 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (where children are concerned, government endorsement “is much more likely to result in coerced religious beliefs”). The only way for graduation attendees to avoid the dynamic is to leave the ceremony. That is a No. 10-2922 33 choice, Lee v. Weisman teaches, the Establishment Clause does not force students to make. See also McCreary Cnty., 545 U.S. at 881-82 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (“Free people are entitled to free and diverse thoughts, which government ought neither to constrain nor to direct.”).