Court Opinion

ID: 9488174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:38:19.231292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:44.233213
License: Public Domain

MANION, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In 1941, the State of Illinois recognized Good Friday as a state holiday. Of course things were much different then. The world was under a cloud of war that would soon involve the United States, and constitutional challenges were not routinely filed whenever prayer or religion was in any way associated with a public entity. We do not know why the legislature made Good Friday a holiday in 1941 because there is no legislative history. We do know that in April of 1942, the Governor of Illinois issued a proclamation. He wrote:
The hallowed traditions of almost two thousand years cluster around the Friday just preceding Easter Sunday. Good Friday, as it has come to be called, is a day charged with especial meaning to multitudes throughout the Christian world.
Good Friday was lately given appropriate statutory recognition in Illinois. By enactment of the last regular session of our General Assembly, the day was made a legal and school holiday throughout the State.
The widespread commemoration of Good Friday, always becoming, is eminently fitting in these times of unusual stress.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DWIGHT H. GREEN, Governor of the State of Illinois, by this official proclamation, do hereby direct attention to this significant day, Good Friday, which falls this year on April 3, and commend the sacred rites and ceremonies of the occasion to the thoughtful consideration of churchgoers and believers throughout the state.
While the Governor opined that the commemoration of Good Friday was “eminently fitting in these times of unusual stress” he did not reflect on why Good Friday became a state holiday. Still, the Good Friday holiday became part of the routine for two generations of Illinois state employees, students, and people who worked at banks.
In 1989 something changed. The State repealed the Good Friday holiday, again without leaving any stated reason for its decision. P.A. 86-754, § 6 (eff. Sept. 1, 1989). Yet the school holiday was left in place, 105 ILCS 5/24-2, and banks retained the option to close without violating the Illinois Promissory Note and Bank Holiday Act. 205 ILCS 630/17.
We can only speculate why Illinois first passed, and fifty years later repealed, the state holiday. Ms. Metzl speculates that the Good Friday holiday for school children was first created, and then left in place, because the State wanted to promote Christianity. She relies on the statement made by the Governor in 1942. But Governors tend to make solemn, even religious proclamations on other days, such as Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Because those days are secularized— people attend races, go to the beach, eat turkey and exchange presents — whatever religious overtones they once had are sufficiently diluted to pass constitutional scrutiny. According to Ms. Metzl, Good Friday has not been secularized, and thus, is the only purely religious holdiay upon which the State school system shuts down. Therefore, she speculates, making Good Friday a holiday is pref*625erential treatment for Christians that violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
The Board denies any allegation of religious discrimination and offers two related justifications for the Good Friday closing. First the Board claims that, whatever the origin of the Good Friday holiday, the school closing was preserved in 1989 because two generations of students and teachers have come to regard it as a traditional long weekend in Spring, and frequently, the beginning of Spring break. In this regard, the Board claims that Good Friday is best treated like Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Sunday closing laws: a practice that may once have had a religious rationale, but is now secular, and therefore, it is said, constitutional. Cf. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). Second, the state has argued that, to the extent religion was considered when the holiday was created in 1941 or preserved in 1989, the holiday is designed to accommodate the Good Friday observance of its large Christian population. And indeed, the State’s desire to accommodate the religious practice of every student is apparent from the Code. The Code unequivocally provides that every student must be permitted to be absent for religious reasons and that no student should be penalized for such absences. The Code also allows local school boards to close school on days as they see fit, and it is uncontested that some local school boards have closed on Jewish holidays to accommodate the religious observance of their Jewish students.
Why the School Code treats Good Friday differently from other religious holidays requires some more information. According to the Board, teachers are deterred from giving examinations or covering new material on days with significant absenteeism because the whole class wastes time waiting for the absentees to catch up. Also Good Friday is treated differently under the School Code because the Christian student population is much larger than that of other religious groups. Thus the State estimates that there will be a higher degree of absenteeism. In support of this claim, the Board has offered statistics showing that Christianity is the most represented religion among United States citizens, and indeed, as of 1990 Christians compose 57.7%, and as of 1993 Jews represent 2.3%, of the state population. Statistical Abstract of the United States p. 72 (1994) (no percentages for other religious groups are given).
But Ms. Metzl thinks the Board is deceiving the public. She believes that the School Code should treat Good Friday like other religious holidays. She asserts that the State closes all its schools on Good Friday because the State wants to favor Christians over Jews, Muslims, and others. The court today believes it is obliged to agree with Ms. Metzl, because the Board has produced so little evidence. I disagree.
Fundamentally my disagreement concerns the allocation of the burden of proof. Unlike the court, I believe that the burden shifting method commonly employed with respect to civil rights claims should be employed with respect to this constitutional claim. Thus, while I acknowledge that Ms. Metzl’s showing requires the Board to produce a justification for the Good Friday holiday, I think the Board’s burden is just that: a burden of production. Therefore, the burden of persuasion — and risk of nonpersuasion — should remain with Ms. Metzl at all times. Cf. Texas Dept. of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 256-58, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 1095-96, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981); St. Mary’s Honor Center v. Hicks, — U.S. -, - - -, 113 S.Ct. 2742, 2747-49, 125 L.Ed.2d 407 (1993). And whatever the Board’s burden with respect to its justification, Ms. Metzl always bears the burden of proof with respect to her ease in chief. See e.g., NLRB v. Transportation Management Corp., 462 U.S. 393, 401, 103 S.Ct. 2469, 2474, 76 L.Ed.2d 667 (1983); cf. Sonicraft, supra. So even if the Board has failed to prove its justification, we must still ask whether Ms. Metzl has proven her claim after we have examined all the evidence of record.
The record shows that Ms. Metzl has failed to carry her burden. Good Friday has been a school holiday for half a century yet no one detected religious discrimination for all those years. Other than the governor’s rather innocuous proclamation in 1941, Ms. Metzl has *626offered nothing that shows any present or original intent to favor Christianity over other religions. Surely Ms. Metzl must show something other than the mere fact that Good Friday is a holiday in order to prevail on her claim that the holiday is intended to favor Christians over Muslims, Jews, and others.
Such evidence is essential because the Board has offered two legitimate justifications for the Good Friday holiday and produced evidence in support of both. First, the Board has argued that students and teachers have come to regard Good Friday as a long weekend in Spring, and usually the beginning of Spring break. The record supports the Board’s justification and indicates that the State shares its view, for it is uncontested that the Good Friday holiday was repealed for state workers and banks in 1989. As the court points out, the record does not show why the holiday was eliminated for public employees but not for public school students. Perhaps state employees had too many days off so this holiday had to go; after all for state employees each holiday off is one less day of work. Each holiday is not one less work day for students and teachers, however; it is one less day of summer vacation, so the school holiday could stay. Although such speculation should not allow either side to prevail, certainly repealing the Good Friday holiday for state employees and lifting the ban on banking is the opposite of pursuing religious discrimination in favor of Christianity. That repeal is a fact that cannot be disputed. I also note that the New York Stock Exchange, the National Association of Securities Dealers, the Options Clearing Corporation, and the Intermarket Clearing Organization, all close on Good Friday. And when the Securities and Exchange Commission polled member firms in 1985 to determine if they wanted to extend daily hours and/or open on Good Friday, the majority of respondents favored opening the market earlier each day, but staying closed on Good Friday. See SEC Notice: Proposed Rule Change Relating to 9:30 a.m. Opening, 50 Fed.Reg. 41283 at n. 3 (1985). This result, reached by more purely economic forces, supports the Board’s claim that the Good Friday holiday has taken on a secular raison d’etre quite apart from its religious origins, albeit without distinctive secular trappings.
The Board’s related justification for the Good Friday holiday is that, to the extent its religious nature was considered at all when the holiday was created in-1941, and preserved for schools in 1989, the holiday is designed to accommodate the large number of Christians in the student body and spare other students a school day wasted because of excessive absenteeism. The statistics referred to above support the Board’s assertion. Also the School Code, especially as applied, belies any notion that it is designed to favor Christians over other religious sects. It is undisputed that several local school boards have used the local closing option to accommodate the religious practices of their Jewish students even though Jews comprise only 2.3% of the State’s population. To its credit, the court has acknowledged this option for local school boards and says nothing to discourage that practice. This local practice supports the Board’s assertion that school closings on religious holidays — Christian or Jewish — are simply a matter of expected absenteeism and its impact on the efficiency of the school system.
Admittedly, the Board has not produced much evidence as to why the Good Friday holiday was created or the number of probable absentees on that day, but the Board’s marginal showing is easily explained given the facts of this case. For one thing, the state legislature, not the Board, created the holiday in 1941 and repealed it for all but the schools in 1989; and with no legislative history, the Board could only speculate about the legislature’s motive or gather unofficial testimony about the reasons for the repeal. Further, Good Friday has been a school holiday for 54 years. Thus, it is not surprising that the Board did not ask present students whether they would take the day off if there was no holiday. And it would be silly and irrelevant to ask former students whether they would have skipped school if Good Friday was not a holiday. Whatever the case, it is undisputed that the Board has never taken such a poll. Under these circumstances, and given the evidence and inferences noted above, I do not agree that the Board’s failure *627to produce evidence of absenteeism defeats its claim that the purpose of the Good Friday holiday is an accommodation of religion rather than religious discrimination. Cf. Soria v. Ozinga Bros., Inc., 704 F.2d 990, 996 n. 7 (7th Cir.1983) (failure to keep records did not give rise to adverse presumption where there was no evidence of willful destruction of existing records).
More fundamentally, I believe the evidence and inferences noted above show that Metzl has failed to carry her burden of proving that the sole purpose behind the Good Friday holiday, see Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 680, 681 n. 6, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 1362, 1363 n. 6, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1983); Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589, 602-03, 108 S.Ct. 2562, 2571, 101 L.Ed.2d 520 (1988), is the wholly impermissible purpose of favoring Christians over Muslims, Jews, and others. Both Ms. Metzl and the court rely upon the Governor’s proclamation, but that political platitude was issued one year after the law was passed, shortly after America declared war, and it simply recommends the holiday to those who believe it has significance. And whatever the purpose of the “statutory recognition” given the holiday in 1941, its repeal in 1989 for all but the schools plainly indicates that the State is not trying to favor Christians over others. Thus, Ms. Metzl’s claim really boils down to the mere fact that Good Friday is a Christian religious holiday that is treated differently from other religious holidays. From that simple unadorned fact she asks us to infer that the State retained the Good Friday holiday in 1989 for the purpose of favoring Christians over Muslims, Jews, and others. In short, Ms. Metzl has produced even less evidence than the Board. But in order to upset a 50 year law on the grounds that it is a “law respecting an establishment of religion,” U.S. Const, amend I, she should bear the burden of proof and the risk of nonpersuasion. Because Ms. Metzl has failed to produce evidence that makes her inference of religious discrimination reasonable in light of competing inferences, see Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio, 475 U.S. 574, 588, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 1356, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986), she has failed to satisfy that burden, and therefore, her claim must fail. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.