Court Opinion

ID: 9468149
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:06:09.208677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:42.804720
License: Public Domain

ALLEN SHARP, District Judge,
dissenting:
This case involves the careful sorting of several very important First Amendment values in the context of the public school classroom. My distinguished panel colleagues have sorted those values to reach a result with which I cannot concur. With respectful deference I therefore dissent.
The establishment of religious freedom is not the same thing as the establishment of a religion.
I believe that the majority has misapplied the Establishment Clause. I believe that the challenged legislation has the primary purpose and effect of promoting not religion, but religious freedom. The majority has found that the Establishment Clause prohibits voluntary audible prayer of any kind at any time in the public schools. The program which the challenged legislation creates is voluntary, has no sectarian substance, and does not materially interfere with the educational function of public schools. I share the district court’s concern that this decision will be received as projecting a governmental hostility towards religion.
I.
The state and the school board were in a posture more friendly to religion after the adoption of the challenged legislation than they were in before its adoption. But legislation which moves a government into a posture relatively more friendly to religion is not ipso facto in violation of the Establishment Clause. Likewise, legislation which moves a government into a posture relatively more hostile to religion is not ipso facto in violation of either the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause. For example, a taxing authority can choose to adopt or repeal tax exemption for church property. Likewise, a public school can choose to prohibit or allow the uttering of audible prayers by students. The Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses are bounds within which governments are free to move in their activities which effect religion. A governmental body oversteps the Establishment Clause by adopting legislation which violates one of three tests. “First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion (citation omitted); finally, the statute must not foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’ ” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 2111, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971).
These tests are not rigid. The language used to state the tests betrays considerable flexibility. The second test does not prohibit a statute from having an effect of advancing religion, unless advancing religion is the statute’s “principal or primary” effect. The last test does not prohibit all governmental entanglement with religion, but only that entanglement which is “excessive.” The constitutional line of separation between church and state, “far from being a ‘wall,’ is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship.” Id. at 614, 91 S.Ct. at 2112.
The challenged legislation satisfies all of the three criteria of the Establishment Clause. The legislative purpose of the challenged program was to provide religious freedom, a purpose no more religious than *904the First Amendment. Furthermore, the challenged legislation has the primary effect of advancing not religion, but religious freedom. And it does so without excessive governmental entanglement with religion.
A.
This legislation does not violate the first criterion of the Establishment Clause. This legislation has a secular legislative purpose.
I agree that the District Court was clearly in error in finding that the purpose behind the challenged legislation was to provide a mechanism by which children could learn about beliefs different from their own, focus on spiritual aspects of human nature, and thereby develop an increased regard for themselves and their peers. I also agree that prayer is an inherently religious exercise. There is no doubt in my mind that the challenged legislation was the direct result of pressure from parents who wanted their children, at the beginning of each school day, to have an opportunity to formally and audibly recognize the existence of, and seek the benevolence of, a supreme being. It seems clear to me that the purpose behind the challenged legislation was to provide students with the freedom to engage in a religious exercise, opening their school day with an audible prayer.
But it seems to me that this is a perfectly legitimate, secular purpose. Providing the freedom to engage in religious exercises is the purpose of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. It can surely not be argued that the First Amendment has a religious purpose. The purpose of the challenged legislation is to provide students with a small portion of the religious freedom which they are guaranteed outside the classroom. School attendance is, after all, compulsory in Louisiana. Compulsory school attendance forces many students into public schools, thereby unavoidably curtailing their freedom to engage in religious exercises. For Louisiana to reduce its restraint on student’s religious freedom is perfectly legitimate.
If a student’s religion required him or her to utter an audible prayer at the beginning of each school day, the Free Exercise Clause would require the school to accommodate that requirement. Unfortunately for the students who would have participated in the program in this case, their religion did not require them to utter such an audible prayer, even though their religion apparently encouraged it sufficiently for their parents to petition the state legislature to provide for the allowance of such an audible prayer. I do not read the Establishment Clause to prohibit all audible public school prayer which the Free Exercise Clause does not protect. “[I]t is hardly impermissible for Congress to attempt to accommodate free exercise values, in line with ‘our happy tradition’ of ‘avoiding unnecessary clashes with the dictates of conscience.’ ” Gillette v. United States, 401 U.S. 437, 453, 91 S.Ct. 828, 838, 28 L.Ed.2d 168 (1971). “The limits of permissible state accommodation to religion are by no means co-extensive with the noninterference mandated by the Free Exercise Clause.” Walz v. Tax Commission of New York, 397 U.S. 664, 673, 90 S.Ct. 1409, 1413, 25 L.Ed.2d 697 (1970).
Louisiana and the Jefferson Parish School Board have not attempted to establish a religion; rather, they have attempted to provide religious freedom.
B.
Nor does it seem to me that this legislation violates the second criterion of the Establishment Clause. The primary effect of the challenged legislation is neither to advance nor to inhibit religion, but rather to advance religious freedom.
There are only three ways in which a state could possibly treat audible prayer in public schools; require it, allow it, or prohibit it. Requiring it would be an elementary violation of the Establishment Clause. But it seems to me that the state should be allowed to choose between allowing audible prayer and prohibiting it. Compared to each other, allowing audible prayer advances religion, and prohibiting audible prayer inhibits religion. Prohibiting audible prayer may have the effect of inhibiting religion, but does not violate the Establish*905ment Clause because prohibiting audible prayer has the primary effect of enabling the school to conveniently maintain order. Allowing audible prayer may have the effect of advancing religion, but (when the government does not establish the prayer’s content) does not violate the Establishment Clause because allowing audible prayer has the primary effect of promoting religious freedom.
Not every law which incidentally benefits religion violates this second criterion of the Establishment Clause. Even in cases where the government provides financial aid to schools with religious affiliation, the obvious benefit to religion does not render the program violative of the Establishment Clause.
Whatever may be its initial appeal, the proposition that the Establishment Clause prohibits any program which in some manner aids an institution with a religious affiliation has consistently been rejected. E. g., Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.S. 291, 20 S.Ct. 121, 44 L.Ed. 168 (1899); Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U.S. 664, 90 S.Ct. 1409, 25 L.Ed.2d 697 (1970); Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672, 91 S.Ct. 2091, 29 L.Ed.2d 790 (1971). Stated another way, the Court has not accepted the recurrent argument that all aid is forbidden because aid to one aspect of an institution frees it to spend its other resources on religious ends.
Hunt v. McNair, 413 U.S. 734, 742-43, 93 S.Ct. 2868, 2873-74, 37 L.Ed.2d 923 (1973). An incidental benefit to religion is irrelevant if the challenged legislation has a legitimate primary or principle effect.
A program of voluntary religious exercise does not have the primary effect of advancing religious freedom if the government establishes the substantive content of the exercise. Such a program has the primary effect of advancing a state religion. Thus, the Supreme Court has ruled that “each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance.” Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 435, 82 S.Ct. 1261, 1269, 8 L.Ed.2d 601 (1962); Accord, School District of Abington Twp., Pa., v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed.2d 844 (1963) (State required opening of school day with Bible reading, giving students the option of absenting themselves.); See also, Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 101 S.Ct. 192, 66 L.Ed. 199 (1980) (State required classroom posting of Ten Commandments.), Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 89 S.Ct. 266, 21 L.Ed.2d 228 (1968) (State prohibited teaching evolution.). Government is not allowed to concern itself with determining the legitimacy of the substantive content of the practices or teachings of religions or non-religious world views. Voluntariness is utterly irrelevant when the challenged legislation establishes the substantive content of a religious activity. Such legislation has the primary effect of advancing not religious freedom, but a state religion.
Likewise, a government’s lack of concern with substantive content is irrelevant when the challenged legislation provides for involuntary programs which benefit religion. Thus coercive “release time” programs for religious training violate the Establishment Clause even when the government does not concern itself with the content of the religious teaching. In McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 68 S.Ct. 461, 92 L.Ed. 649 (1948), the Supreme Court said,
The foregoing facts, without reference to others that appear in the record, show the use of tax-supported property for religious instruction and the close cooperation between the school authorities and the religious council in promoting religious education. The operation of the state’s compulsory education system thus assists and is integrated with the program of religious instruction carried on by separate religious sects. Pupils compelled by . law to go to school for secular education are released in part from their legal duty upon the condition that they attend the religious classes. This is beyond all question a utilization of the tax-established and tax-supported public school system to aid religious groups to spread their faith.
*906Here not only are the state’s tax-supported public school buildings used for the dissemination of religious doctrines. The State also affords sectarian groups an invaluable aid in that it helps to provide pupils for their religious classes through use of the state’s compulsory public school machinery. This is not separation of Church and State.
333 U.S. at 209-12, 68 S.Ct. at 464-65. Cf. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 72 S.Ct. 679, 96 L.Ed. 954 (1952) (Non-coercive “release time” program, for religious training off of school premises, does not violate the Establishment Clause.). Government is not allowed to use its coercive power for the benefit of religions. That the government is unconcerned with the substantive content of the religions it is benefitting is utterly irrelevant when the challenged legislation invokes the government’s coercive power to benefit religions. Such legislation has the primary effect of advancing not religious freedom, but religion.
But, where the legislatively created program is both voluntary and without substantive content, it can have the primary effect of advancing neither a state religion nor religion in general, but religious freedom. The legislation in this case has the primary effect of advancing religious freedom. This is not a case where tax-supported public school property is used to aid religious groups to spread their faith to students coerced into attending classes in religious instruction. This is not even a case where tax-supported public school property is used to aid religious groups to spread their faith to students who voluntarily participate. In this case, students coerced into attending public schools are allowed to engage in a religious activity the contents of which they themselves determine. As the Supreme Court has said,
[I]t is now firmly established that a law may be one “respecting an establishment of religion” even though its consequence is not to promote a “state religion” (citation deleted), and even though it does not aid one religion more than another but merely benefits all religions alike, (citation deleted) It is equally well established, however, that not every law that confers an “indirect,” “remote,” or “incidental” benefit upon religious institutions is, for that reason alone, constitutionally invalid, (citations deleted) What our cases require is careful examination of any law challenged on establishment grounds with a view to ascertaining whether it furthers any of the evils against which that Clause protects.
Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 771— 72, 93 S.Ct. 2955, 2964-65, 37 L.Ed.2d 948 (1973). It does not seem to me that this legislation furthers any of the evils against which the Establishment Clause protects.
The primary effect of the challenged legislation is not to advance religion; rather, the primary effect is to advance religious freedom.
C.
Finally, this legislation does not violate the third criterion of- the Establishment Clause. The government entanglement with religion which is fostered by the challenged legislation is hardly excessive; it is de minimus. The program established by the challenged legislation is necessarily conducted on public school property, but the amount of time involved does not materially affect the educational function of the school. The state limits the time period to five minutes, and Jefferson Parish limits the time period to one minute. School officials’ monitoring of the program to guarantee voluntariness, to enforce time limitations, and to choose among student volunteers simply does not raise the level of the government’s entanglement to “excessive.”
If some students wish to open their school day with an audible prayer, an indisputably religious activity, it seems to me that the Constitution does not prohibit them from doing so.
Teachers are, at least from the perspective of the students, government officials. Cf. Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209, 97 S.Ct. 1782, 52 L.Ed.2d 261 (1977) (Teachers have First Amendment rights which must be considered in the area of labor relations.) It is troubling that this legislation expressly allows teachers to of*907fer audible prayer, because there is a danger that from this provision teachers would infer authority to conduct the prayer period in a manner which violates the Establishment Clause. But teachers are aware of the Establishment Clause restraints placed on them by their status as government officials. And not every prayer uttered by a government official violates the Establishment Clause. Otherwise the Constitution would prohibit, for example, the perfunctory invocation with which this,Court’s daily sessions are opened. Whether teachers would abuse this legislative program is a case entirely different from the case now before this Court. There is, of course, no record on which to determine the existence of any such abuse, because the legislative program was never put into effect. The case before this Court now is a challenge to the legislation on its face. On its face, the legislation does not authorize teachers to violate the'Establishment Clause.
It is my opinion that the challenged legislation has the legitimate, secular, purpose and effect of providing religious freedom, with minimal governmental entanglement with religion. It is my opinion that the challenged legislation is constitutional. I would affirm the decision of the District Court.