Opinion ID: 222596
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Application to the Indian River School Board

Text: In light of this jurisprudential background, we must determine whether our analysis of the Indian River School Board's Prayer Policy is guided by the principles endorsed in Lee v. Weisman or by the exception established in Marsh v. Chambers . For the reasons below, we conclude that Marsh's legislative prayer exception does not apply and find that Lee provides a better framework for our analysis. [7] Lee and the Supreme Court's other school prayer cases reveal that the need to protect students from government coercion in the form of endorsed or sponsored religion is at the heart of the school prayer cases. This reflects the fundamental guarantee of the First Amendment that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise. Lee, 505 U.S. at 587, 112 S.Ct. 2649. The risk of coercion is heightened in the public school context: prayer exercises in public schools carry a particular risk of indirect coercion. Id. The possibility of coercion is greater in schools because children are more susceptible to pressure from their peers. Id. at 593, 112 S.Ct. 2649; see also Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 584, 107 S.Ct. 2573, 96 L.Ed.2d 510 (1987) (Students in [elementary and secondary schools] are impressionable.... The State exerts great authority and coercive power... because of ... the children's susceptibility to peer pressure.). Thus, the Supreme Court has recognized a distinction when government-sponsored religious exercises are directed at impressionable children who are required to attend school, for then government endorsement is much more likely to result in coerced religious beliefs. Wallace, 472 U.S. at 81, 105 S.Ct. 2479 (O'Connor, J., concurring). Marsh does not adequately capture these concerns. The Indian River School Board carries out its practice of praying in an atmosphere that contains many of the same indicia of coercion and involuntariness that the Supreme Court has recognized elsewhere in its school prayer jurisprudence. While there is no doubt that school board meetings do not necessarily hold the same type of personal and cultural significance as a high school graduation or perhaps even a football game, we take to heart the Supreme Court's observation that, in this respect, [l]aw reaches past formalism. Lee, 505 U.S. at 595, 112 S.Ct. 2649. In Lee, although the parties stipulated that attendance at the graduation was voluntary, the Court rejected that characterization: Attendance may not be required by official decree, yet it is apparent that a student is not free to absent herself from the graduation exercise in any real sense of the term voluntary, for absence would require forfeiture of those intangible benefits which have motivated the student through youth and all her high school years. Graduation is a time for family and those closest to the student to celebrate success and express mutual wishes of gratitude and respect, all to the end of impressing upon the young person the role that it is his or her right and duty to assume in the community and all of its diverse parts. 505 U.S. at 595, 112 S.Ct. 2649. In Santa Fe, the school district also argued that attendance at a high school game was distinguishable from the involuntary nature of graduation exercises that Lee recognized. 530 U.S. at 311, 120 S.Ct. 2266. The Supreme Court agreed that [a]ttendance at a high school football game ... is certainly not required in order to receive a diploma, but rejected the formalism inherent in the district's argument. Id. For certain students, namely the cheerleaders, members of the band, and of course, the team members themselves, attendance at the football game is mandatory as part of their seasonal commitment. Id. The Supreme Court cautioned against minimiz[ing] the importance... of attending and participating in extracurricular activities as part of a complete educational experience. Id. Of course, some students may choose not to attend the games. However, for a second group of students  those who have no formal role at the football games  the event still is nonetheless a meaningful one and the choice between attending these games and avoiding personally offensive religious rituals is in no practical sense an easy one. Id. at 312, 120 S.Ct. 2266. The Indian River Board meetings are akin to those events. It is true that attendance at the Indian River School Board meetings is not technically mandatory. Nevertheless, the meetings bear several markings of involuntariness and the implied coercion that the Court has acknowledged elsewhere. First, like graduations, the Board's recognition of student achievement allows family and those closest to the student to celebrate success. Id. For years, the Indian River School Board has used its regular meeting to recognize student accomplishment of various types. These are awards that were previously given out at student assemblies, but the Board deliberately decided to change the location of the awards to its meetings. This change had the effect of ensuring student attendance at nearly all the Board meetings that take place during the school year. Over the years, hundreds of individual students and students groups have attended a Board meeting in order to be recognized for their academic, athletic, or artistic skills and achievements. Their families are asked to join them in the celebration. At the meeting, the student's name is called and they are presented with a letter commemorating the experience. The award is reflected in the minutes and may be published in the local newspaper. Thus, by virtue of the way in which it gives out these awards, the Board does more than casually celebrate student accomplishments; it effectively cloaks them in official recognition. Therefore, like commencement exercises, a student who decides not to attend the meeting will forfeit ... intangible benefits that have motivated the student. Lee, 505 U.S. at 595, 112 S.Ct. 2649. They will be giving up an opportunity to celebrate success and express mutual wishes of gratitude and respect. Id. Of course, attendance at a meeting of the Board does not bear all of the same hallmarks of personal and cultural significance that a high school graduation ceremony does. It may not be one of life's most significant occasions. Id. at 595, 112 S.Ct. 2649. It may not be as exciting an event as a football game. But the Indian River School Board has deliberately made its meetings meaningful to students in the district. The significance of the awards portion of the meeting is borne out by Bireley's testimony. Bireley testified that it was an honor for [the students] to come to receive an award at the meetings. JA 393. These awards are such an important part of student life that Bireley was not aware of any instance where a student declined to attend the meeting to receive an award, other than for a scheduling conflict. Thus, for these students, the meetings are a culmination of their extracurricular activities. [8] This has additional implications for awards given out to teams. In situations where entire teams are honored, a student may feel especially coerced to attend a meeting where the Board recites a prayer. A student may feel pressure to attend the meeting with their team; to do otherwise could be construed as abandoning the team. At the very least, a team member who absents herself will not receive the same tangible and intangible benefits as her teammates. In this context, the Supreme Court's observation that students are particularly vulnerable to peer pressure in social context is an important one. Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 311-12, 120 S.Ct. 2266 (We stressed in Lee the obvious observation that adolescents are often susceptible to pressure from their peers towards conformity, and that the influence is strongest in matters of social convention.) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Given this pressure, we question whether an individual team member will feel free to choose not to attend the meeting in order to avoid participating in the prayer when the rest of the team is being honored at the meeting. The existence of such pressure is borne out by a critical fact in the record: students have never decided not to attend the meetings, other than for a scheduling conflict. Moreover, for at least some students, attendance at the Board meetings is more formally part of their extracurricular activities, and thus is closer to compulsory. JROTC members are one example. Every Board meeting begins with a presentation of the colors of the high school where the Board meeting is taking place. There are only two such JROTC programs, and thus the students in the JROTC must attend the meetings. Attendance also borders on compulsory for student government representatives. Student government members are invited to the Board meetings in their official capacity as representatives of the two local high schools. Their presentations to the Board are a specific part of the Board's agenda. The record confirms that student government leaders routinely attend the meetings and speak on a wide variety of issues relating to the student experience in the Indian River School District. Thus, they directly represent student interests at the Board's meeting. The meeting gives student government representatives  and therefore all the students  an opportunity to draw attention to issues that affect their educational experience. As befits their role, student representatives may speak on a number of different issues. An example from the minutes illustrates the nature of these presentations. At the March 22, 2005 Board meeting, a student representing Sussex Central Student Council gave a lengthy presentation identifying the issues affecting the student body, including students' reactions to the new school lunch menu, the themes and locations of the school's upcoming prom, the result of efforts to raise funds for disaster relief, problems with the athletic fields, accomplishments at various athletic competitions, efforts by the guidance office to assist with college applications, and the administration of state educational exams. To say that the attendance of student government representatives is not part of their extracurricular obligations is to undermine the contributions these students make to their school and their communities. In this regard, they are more like the cheerleaders, members of the band, and, of course, the team members themselves, for whom seasonal commitments mandate their attendance at football games. Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 290, 120 S.Ct. 2266. [9] The Board argues that its meetings are distinguishable from graduations because audience members, including students, may freely enter and exit  and they do. If Appellants or anyone else finds it truly intolerable to hear a brief prayer they can easily absent themselves for that short portion of the meeting. Appellee Br. 29. They point out that, under Lee, the ability to come and go freely without notice or interference is highly relevant to the inquiry. Id. Appellees misunderstand the lesson in Lee. Simply put, giving a student the option to leave a prayer is not a cure for a constitutional violation. Lee, 505 U.S. at 596, 112 S.Ct. 2649; see also Engel, 370 U.S. at 425, 82 S.Ct. 1261; Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 312, 120 S.Ct. 2266. It is a tenet of the First Amendment that the State cannot require one of its citizens to forfeit his or her rights and benefits as the price of resisting conformance to state-sponsored religious practice. Lee, 505 U.S. at 596, 112 S.Ct. 2649. The First Amendment does not allow the state to force this kind of choice upon a student. Additional contextual elements of the Board meetings betray the possibility that students will feel coerced into participating in the prayer practice. The meetings take place on school property. The Board retains complete control over the meeting; it sets the agenda and the schedule, for example. Cf. Lee, 505 U.S. at 597, 112 S.Ct. 2649 (At a high school graduation, teachers and principals must and do retain a high degree of control over the precise contents of the program, the speeches, the timing, the movements, the dress, and the decorum of the students.). It is in this context that the Board itself composes and recites the prayer. Thus, the Board is involved in every aspect of the prayer. In these circumstances, it is particularly difficult to imagine that a student would not feel pressure to participate in the practice, or at least appear to agree with it  particularly a student appearing in front of the Board to contest a disciplinary action. Second, regardless of whether the Board is a deliberative or legislative body, we conclude that Marsh is ill-suited to this context because the entire purpose and structure of the Indian River School Board revolves around public school education. The District Court's starting position was that Marsh applied because the School Board was a legislative body. We find this analysis unpersuasive. To conclude that, merely because the Board has duties and powers similar to a legislative body Marsh applies, is to ignore the Board's role in Delaware's system of public school education. Every aspect of the Indian River School Board is intended to promote and support the public school system. By statute, the Board's purpose is to administer and to supervise the free public schools of the ... school district and determine policy and adopt rules and regulations for the general administration and supervision of the schools. 14 Del. C. § 1043. All of the Board's policy making responsibilities are aimed at educating students or otherwise administering the public school system. For example, the Board determines the number of hours in a school day, enforces school attendance, evaluates schools within the District, decides whether to establish kindergartens, sets the educational policies of the school, adopt[s] courses of study; purchases textbooks and other equipment, and appoint[s] personnel. 14 Del. C. § 1049. More generally, the Board also has the responsibility of prescrib[ing] rules and regulations for the conduct and management of the schools. Id. at § 1049(2). Even the power to levy taxes  which the Board points out is a hallmark of a legislative body  is limited to school purposes. Id. at § 1902. The Board's responsibilities serve to further highlight the compulsory nature of student attendance at Board meetings. A student wishing to comment on school policies or otherwise participate in the decision-making that affects his or her education must attend these meetings. Thus, while such meetings may technically be voluntary, in practice they are not. The First Amendment does not require students to give up their right to participate in their educational system or be rewarded for their school-related achievements as a price for dissenting from a state-sponsored religious practice. Lee, 505 U.S. at 593-94, 112 S.Ct. 2649 (recognizing that, for elementary and secondary school students, the government cannot force one to choose between appearing to participate in state-sponsored religious practice or protesting). As the presence of hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and community members at the Board's contentious August 24, 2004 meeting makes plain, Board meetings are the site of community discussion about school policies and events. In this respect, we find the Sixth Circuit's discussion of the role of school boards instructive. In Coles v. Cleveland Board of Education, 171 F.3d 369, 371 (6th Cir.1999), the Court of Appeals confronted the same question we have before us: Are the prayers in question more like `school prayers' prohibited by Lee or closer to `legislative prayer' permitted by Marsh ? The Sixth Circuit held that the purpose and nature of the school board remove[d] it from the logic in Marsh and... place[d] it squarely within the history and precedent concerning the school prayer line of cases. Id. at 381. The court identified several features of the school board's structure that distinguished it from a traditional legislative body: Although the school board, like many other legislative bodies, is composed of publicly elected officials drawn from the local community, that is where the similarity ends.... Simply stated, the fact that the function of the school board is uniquely directed toward school-related matters gives it a different type of constituency than those of other legislative bodies-namely, students. Unlike ordinary constituencies, students cannot vote. They are thus unable to express their discomfort with state-sponsored religious practices through the democratic process. Lacking a voice in the electoral process, students have a heightened interest in expressing their views about the school system through their participation in school board meetings [U]nlike officials of other legislative bodies, school board members are directly communicating, at least in part, to students. They are setting policies and standards for the education of children within the public school system, a system designed to foster democratic values in the nation's youth, not to exacerbate and amplify differences between them.... Meetings of the board serve as a forum for students to petition school officials on issues affecting their education. Simply put, students do not sit idly by as the board discusses various school-related issues. School board meetings are therefore not the equivalent of galleries in a legislature where spectators are incidental to the work of the public body; students are directly involved in the discussion and debate at school board meetings. Id. at 381-82. We agree with the Sixth Circuit's analysis. The very purpose of the Indian River School Board distinguishes it from other deliberative bodies. For this reason, the fact that other courts have extended Marsh to other legislative or deliberative bodies is not relevant. See Pelphrey v. Cobb Cnty., 547 F.3d at 1276 (county commission meetings); Simpson v. Chesterfield Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 404 F.3d 276, 281 (4th Cir.2005) (county board of supervisors); Snyder, 159 F.3d at 1228 (city council). [10] We begin by noting that the District Court's reasoning ignores Marsh 's suggestion that the presence of children would affect its calculus. In its historical analysis of legislative prayer, the Marsh Court cited to several statements and letters from the Founding Fathers, concluding that this interchange emphasizes that the delegates did not consider opening prayers as a proselytizing activity or as symbolically placing the government's official seal of approval on one religious view. 463 U.S. at 792, 103 S.Ct. 3330 (internal citations and quotations omitted). Yet the Court expressed a note of caution: Here, the individual claiming injury by the practice is an adult, presumably not readily susceptible to religious indoctrination, or peer pressure. Id. (internal citations and quotations omitted). Moreover, although the Marsh Court referenced other deliberative bodies, Marsh 's entire approach rests on the long-standing and unique history of legislative prayer. There may be some truth to the District Court's conclusion that, nothing in Marsh ... suggests that the Court intended to limit its approval of prayer ... to those [legislative and deliberative bodies] that were in existence when the First Amendment was adopted. Id. at 537-38. However, at least one Supreme Court decision after Marsh suggests that Marsh 's analysis is not suitable to public schools. In Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 107 S.Ct. 2573, 96 L.Ed.2d 510 (1987), the Court addressed the question of whether Louisiana's Creationism Act, which forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution in public elementary and secondary schools unless accompanied by instruction in the theory of creation science, violated the Establishment Clause. Id. at 581-82, 107 S.Ct. 2573. Explaining that the appropriate legal test was Lemon, the Court warned that Marsh 's historical approach is not useful in determining the proper roles of church and state in public schools, since free public education was virtually nonexistent at the time the Constitution was adopted. Id. We find additional support in the Supreme Court's subsequent treatment of Marsh. The Court has consistently emphasized the narrow, historical underpinnings of Marsh and has proven reluctant to extend Marsh outside of its narrow historical context. See, e.g., McCreary Cnty., Ky. v. Am. Civil Liberties Union, 545 U.S. 844, 860 n. 10, 125 S.Ct. 2722, 162 L.Ed.2d 729 (2005) (describing Marsh as a special instance[]); Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 603-05, 109 S.Ct. 3086 (1989) (while Marsh recognized a unique history of legislative prayer, it plainly does not stand for the sweeping proposition ... that all accepted practices 200 years old and their equivalents are constitutional today); Wallace, 472 U.S. at 63 & n. 5, 105 S.Ct. 2479 (explaining that since Lemon was adopted, only Marsh has been decided without resort to [the] three-pronged test and Marsh was based primarily on... long historical practice) (Powell, J., concurring). Only one Supreme Court case has drawn extensively on Marsh 's historical analysis, and, even in that case, the Court ultimately applied the Lemon test to determine that a city's display of the nativity scene violated the Establishment Clause. See Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 673-74, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1984). Appellees argue that to suggest that Board prayer becomes unconstitutional simply because a handful of students ... attend a monthly meeting where a sixty-second prayer is offered, is absurd. Appellee Br. 31. This overstatement does not reflect our holding. [11] The mere presence of students at a legislative session is not what makes the Indian River policy unconstitutional. Our decision is premised on careful consideration of the role of students at school boards, the purpose of the school board, and the principles underlying the Supreme Court's school prayer case law. It does not endanger the centuries-long practice of prayer at legislative sessions. [12] We are tasked with protect[ing] freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and public schools. Lee, 505 U.S. at 592, 112 S.Ct. 2649. In the public school context, the need to protect students from coercion is of the utmost importance. In sum, because we find that the type of potentially coercive atmosphere the Supreme Court asks us to guard against is present here, because of the nature of the relationship between the Board and Indian River students and schools, and in light of Marsh 's narrow historical context, we hold that the District Court erred in applying the legislative exception to the Indian River Prayer Policy.