Court Opinion

ID: 9463442
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:07:26.35635+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:07.200463
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
I agree that Abington1 condemns the devotional period in question here. For reasons which I will shortly suggest in another context, Mr. Justice Stewart’s dissent in that case seems to me to express the sounder view; but the majority opinion is the law, and we must acknowledge and obey it.
With greater reservations, I also agree that Fla.Stat. § 231.09(2) is unconstitutional insofar as it requires teachers to inculcate “Christian” virtue in their students. The majority warily concedes that the statute would “probably” be constitutional if it merely exhorted the teachers to inculcate virtue. For my part, I cannot conceive how it could fail to be. The Constitution can hardly be read as commanding mentors to be neutral as between virtue and vice in their pupils. It is true that the catalogue of *580Christian virtues is, as this record indicates, well established to consist of faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude. These qualities have, I venture, commonly been more esteemed in the young than their opposites: cynicism, despair, hatred, foolishness, excess, unfairness and cowardice. But to refer to them legislatively as “Christian” virtues is, though an accurate shorthand phrase, a somewhat loaded way in which to save four words and a doubtless-irritating indication to the fastidious that Florida generally endorses the Christian faith.
I dissent, however, from the court’s invalidating what it terms “Bible Distribution,” a characterization both too loose and too cryptic for what was being done here and one which conjures up visions of the favored Gideons, admitted where all others were excluded, buttonholing pupils in halls and classrooms and pressing Testaments upon them. Something bearing some resemblance to this may once have taken place in what the majority terms “the first wave of distribution,” but it is now plainly forbidden by the Board’s guidelines quoted by the majority at note 3. Yet the majority apparently sees no distinction between the two procedures, lumping them both together under the one category. But the practice currently permitted by the Board’s guidelines and stricken down by the majority amounts to no more than permitting all faiths who wish to do so to deposit literature at a place designated by the school, where it may be picked up by any students who want it and ignored by those who do not.
This is the “only procedure” permitted by the defendant school board’s rules for handling such matter.2 Thus, the majority decrees that all religious literature must be entirely and completely banned from the Orange County schools and cannot even be left on a table to be picked up by passersby.3 In so doing, it adopts a view of the First Amendment which I, for one, find startling and distressing. This is that all views and ideas may find orderly expression in the public-school forum — all, that is, except religious ones. These are to be banned upon some wooden, nonconstitutional formulation of a wall of separation between church and state. Thus, before our eyes, matters come full circle, the clock strikes thirteen, and the Monkey Trial is enacted in reverse.
There is neither need nor occasion for me to condemn at large such a crude and insensitive version of the separation of church and state. It has all been said before, and better than I could, by the Supreme Court:
There cannot be the slightest doubt that the First Amendment reflects the philosophy that Church and State should be separated. And so far as interference with the “free exercise” of religion and an “establishment” of religion are concerned, the separation must be complete and unequivocal. The First Amendment within the scope of its coverage permits no exception; the prohibition is absolute. The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rather, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other — hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly. Churches could not be required to pay even property taxes. Municipalities would not be permitted to render police or fire protection to religious groups. Policemen who helped parishioners into their places of worship would violate the Constitution. Prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals to the Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day a holiday; “so help me God” in our courtroom oaths — these and all other references to the Almighty that run through our laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies would be flouting the First Amend*581ment. A fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which the Court opens each session: “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 312-13, 72 S.Ct. 679, 683, 96 L.Ed. 954 (1952).
The majority, however, chooses to rest its position on Tudor v. Board of Education, 14 N.J. 31, 100 A.2d 857, 45 A.L.R.2d 729 (1953). Any opinion by Chief Justice Vanderbilt commands respect, and much of this one is indeed admirable. Commencing with a brief statement of operative fact, it sweeps on in its powerful course through an epitome of the historical developments leading up to the adoption of the First Amendment until, in the precise passage picked out and quoted by the majority at its note 33, it leaves the highway and comes to rest at the bottom of a vast non sequitur. The court had noted earlier that “[t]he charge here is sectarianism” and that “[t]he defendant board of education is accused of showing a preference by permitting [!] the distribution of the King James version of the New Testament . . . .”4 It then discusses conflicts between the New Testament and the doctrines of Judaism, concluding with the passage selected by the majority for quotation at note 33:
“The full force of the violation of both the State and Federal Constitutions is revealed when we perceive what might happen if a single school board were besieged by three separate applications for the distribution of Bibles — one from Protestants as here, another from Catholics for the distribution of the -Douay Bible, and a third from Jews for the same privilege for their Bible.”
With respect, I do not see much force here or any violation unless the school board referred to proposes to select one or more sets of sacred writings for distribution and reject all others, an arrangement not suggested anywhere in Tudor or in our case. Were this the proposal, I could entirely agree with Tudor and with the majority. Since it is not, I do not see why our answer here should not be the same as under the First Amendment generally: let all be heard, the Jew, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Buddhist, the Atheist — all who care enough to come forward to advance or defend their views.5 And this is precisely what the Board’s guidelines, here voided, provide for.
With deference, it seems the majority’s First Amendment proposal for handling religious questions amounts to silencing those who wish to speak in deference to those who do not wish or care to. This seems to me to single out religion for especial and hostile treatment and to stand the First Amendment on its head. I dissent from it.

. Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed.2d 844 (1963).

. See text paragraph 2 in footnote 3 of the majority opinion.

. One assumes that any detritus must now be burned by the janitor.

. 100 A.2d at 864, 45 A.L.R.2d at 736.

. Subject, of course, to neutral considerations of time and space available, none of which are in issue here.