Court Opinion

ID: 9458611
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:56:51.755092+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:49.709785
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice CLARK:
This is an appeal from a declaratory judgment entered under the provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and finding that the religious beliefs of John Spence Jr., a conscientious objector attending the Memphis City Schools as a student, had been infringed by a requirement that he participate in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at the schools. The District Court, 325 F.Supp. 601, found that the compulsory program was contrary to the religious beliefs of Spence Jr. as “a conscientious objector” and that the school authorities had failed to show any compelling state interest in requiring his participation in the program. We affirm.
1. At the time Spence Jr. entered the 11th Grade at Central High School in Memphis the state law required that every school student take one year either of physical education or of R.O.T.C. training. No physical education course was offered at Central for male students leaving R.O.T.C. as the only alternative. Nor was any program offered consisting only of those portions of the R.O.T.C. course that were not objectionable to conscientious objectors.
R.O.T.C. was taught by retired U. S. Army officers and the books, manuals and other materials used in the course were prepared by the United States Army. The routine included a study of these materials together with military drills, marksmanship and firearms instruction and military tactics, with the students wearing military uniforms once each week.
There being no physical education course for boys, Spence Jr. attended R. O.T.C. class for the first three days he was enrolled at Central High. Thereafter he refused to attend the R.O.T.C. class, and his father, the appellee here, petitioned the school authorities to exempt Spence Jr. from attending on account of the latter’s conscientious objections.1 The request was denied and upon Spence Jr. refusing to attend, the school authorities notified him that he would not be awarded his diploma even though he passed all other requirements. Upon his graduation he was not awarded a diploma; however, he was able to enroll in and is now attending college despite this handicap.
2. Appellants do not challenge the sincerity or religious motives of Spence Jr. but contend that the compulsory program is a secular one with, at most, incidental and indirect impact on Spence Jr.’s religious beliefs. They also suggest that he could have avoided R.O. T.C. by attending the Memphis Technical School which does provide courses in physical education. But the record shows that this school is far removed from Spence Jr.’s home; its curriculum does not include the necessary liberal art courses preparatory to college and would not meet Spence Jr.’s requirements. We therefore reject these alternatives.
Appellants cite as support for their position Hamilton v. Regents, 293 *799U.S. 245, 55 S.Ct. 197, 79 L.Ed. 343 (1934) approving an R.O.T.C. program in a state land grant college and Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599, 81 S.Ct. 1144, 6 L.Ed.2d 563 (1961) upholding a criminal conviction under state blue laws. In Hamilton the Court specifically found that the University program served the compelling State interest in military training while Appellants concede here that their military training course had no such compelling State interest.2 Indeed since Tennessee has made the R.O.T.C. training course optional with physical education, it would be difficult to conclude that the R.O.T.C. program was vital to the State’s welfare.
Moreover, other factual differences are present. The enrollment at California’s University in Hamilton was voluntary while attendance here is required by law. As Mr. Justice Butler noted in Hamilton, “California has not drafted or called them to attend the University. They are seeking education offered by the state and at the same time insisting that they be excluded from the prescribed course. . .” The Court concluded that due process did not confer “the right to be students in the state university free from obligation to take military training as one of the conditions of attendance.” At 262, 55 S.Ct. at 204. The distinction here is crucial. See West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 631-632, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628 (1943); School District of Abington Township, Pa. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 250-253, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed.2d 844 (1963) (Brennan, J., concurring). Furthermore the school system here conducts a physical education course for female students at all schools while only Technical High provides it for male students. Indeed, the record shows that physical education for Spence Jr. could have been offered at Central High School since facilities were available less than a hundred yards from the main building. Instead the authorities required Spence Jr. to engage in R.O.T.C. training or go to Technical High. If the appellants had utilized the physical education facilities available, the State would have accomplished its purpose by means which would not have imposed such a heavy burden on Spence Jr.’s free exercise of his religion. As was said in Braunfeld, supra, if “the State may accomplish its purpose by means which do not impose such a burden” it must do so. At 607 of 366 U. S., at 1148 of 81 S.Ct.
Braunfeld is one of the Court’s recent opinions which have carefully confined the scope of State regulations that may impinge on religious beliefs and practices. We believe that appellants’ reliance on its is also misplaced. There the State imposed no penalties upon the religious practitioner, but merely proscribed the purely secular activity of work on Sunday. In Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963), however, the Court struck down an unemployment compensation scheme that tended to penalize those who observed Saturday as a religious holiday. The distinction is clear: the regulation in Braunfeld was upheld because it in no way compelled activity that was contrary to religious beliefs and denied no important State benefits to any religious practitioner. The regulation in Sherbert was invalidated because it forced the religious practitioner either to act contrary to his religion (by accepting employment on Saturday) or to be denied important State benefits (unemployment compensation). See Sherbert v. Verner, supra at 402-403, 83 S.Ct. 1790. The regulation here involved is clearly similar to that in Sherbert, since it compels the conscientious objector either to engage in military training contrary to his religious beliefs, or to give up his public education.
*800As Mr. Chief Justice Burger said only recently in upholding Amish religious claims in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 215, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 1533, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972), “only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion.” At 1533. In evaluating rights to the free exercise of religious beliefs, he continued, “we must be careful to determine whether the . . . religious faith” and mode of life of the person are “inseparable and interdependent;” otherwise the faith “may not be interposed as a barrier to reasonable state regulation” if the way of life “is based on purely secular considerations; to have the protection of the Religion Clauses, the claims must be rooted in religious belief.” At 215, 92 S.Ct. at 1533.
3. Here the impact on Spence Jr.’s religious beliefs cannot be minimized. As we have indicated the state does not challenge that Spence Jr.’s claims are rooted in deep religious conviction based, as he says, upon “religious training and belief . . . upon a faith to which all else is subordinate and upon which all else is ultimately dependent.” As Wisconsin’s law requiring compulsory formal education after the 8th grade “would gravely endanger if not destroy the free exercise of religious beliefs,” Id. at p. 219, 92 S.Ct. at p. 1535, of Yoder, so would Tennessee’s law transgress upon Spence Jr.’s.
As the trial judge aptly observed, “the R.O.T.C. course requirement forced John to choose between following his religious beliefs and forfeiting his diploma, on the one hand, and abandoning his religious beliefs and receiving his diploma on the other hand.” The State may not put its citizens to such a Hobson’s choice consistent with the Constitution without showing a “compelling state interest . . . within the State’s constitutional power to regulate . . .” NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 438, 83 S.Ct. 328, 341, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963).
Affirmed.

. Spence Jr.’s religious beliefs and the resulting conflict were stated by him in these words:
“By reason of religious training and belief, I am conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form and am opposed to being subjected to combat training for the purpose of being prepared to enter into war. As stated above, my convictions are based upon religious training and belief which is in turn based upon a power or being or upon a faith to which all else is subordinate and upon which all else is ultimately dependent. This sincere and meaningful belief occupies in my life a place parallel to that filled by the Supreme Being, God

. Appellants do say that they have a compelling interest in refusing all applications for exemptions from the R.O.T.C. compulsory rule, otherwise the burden of its administration would be intolerable. Moreover, they argue that a flood of fraudulent conscientious objectors’ claims will result if Spence Jr.’s application is allowed. However, similar contentions have been made and rejected heretofore. See Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 407, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963).