Court Opinion

ID: 9469496
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:41:49.34443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:24.772300
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
The appellees have filed a petition for rehearing with suggestion for rehearing en banc. Since the judges of the original panel have voted to deny the petition (with Judge Cudahy dissenting), and since none of the judges of the court in regular active service has requested a vote on the petition, it is denied. But we think it may clarify our original opinion to comment briefly on three of the grounds on which rehearing was sought.
We are accused of having failed to apply the clearly-erroneous rule to the district court’s finding that insecurely fastened yarmulkes do not pose a substantial hazard to basketball players. That rule, however, is designed for the review of findings of “historical,” not “legislative,” fact. Legislative facts are those general considerations that move a lawmaking or rulemaking body to adopt a rule, as distinct from the facts which determine whether the rule was correctly applied. There is no question that insecurely fastened yarmulkes are within the scope of the Illinois High School Association’s no-headwear rule; the question is whether the Association’s concern with safety is substantial enough to support the rule as so interpreted; and a fact that goes to the reasonableness of a rule or other enactment is a classic example of a legislative fact, to which as we have said the clearly-erroneous standard does not apply.
The petition for rehearing complains that in our opinion we “scrutinize[d] the sincere religious beliefs of the plaintiffs.” We did not. We expressed doubt whether the stipulation entered into by the parties provided an intelligible account of those beliefs, but on the crucial issue of belief — whether Jewish law requires Jewish males to play basketball wearing only insecurely mounted yarmulkes — we relied on the statement of the plaintiffs’ counsel at oral argument that Jewish law does not specify the method of head covering and would not be violated by a secure method.
Finally and most important, the petition argues that we placed the burden of “accommodating” competing sacred and secular interests on the religious claimants. We did not. We understand “accommodation” in this context to refer to a giving up in whole or in part of some religious practice, or conversely the giving up in whole or in part of some secular obligation, in order *1037to give effect to the competing interest, we had held that the Association’s concern with safety requires that the plaintiffs abandon either interscholastic basketball or adherence to the tenets of their faith, that would be requiring the plaintiffs to “accommodate” their religious claims to the interests asserted by the state. But we did no such thing. We placed on the plaintiffs only the burden of demonstrating that there is in fact a conflict between the state’s interest in safety and their interest in complying with all the requirements of Jewish law. If they can comply fully with all those requirements yet still meet fully the state’s concern with safety, as by wearing a yarmulke securely fastened to the head, then they would not be accommodating their religious beliefs to secular commands because as we have emphasized there appears to be no obligation in Jewish law to cover the head with a cap likely to fall off during basketball play. Only if it should turn out that the plaintiffs cannot devise a secure head covering that will satisfy simultaneously the requirements of Jewish law and the state’s legitimate concern with safety in basketball play would the question of who has the burden of accommodation arise. If