Court Opinion

ID: 9667402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:44:41.233423+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:37.654537
License: Public Domain

PEDERSON, Justice,
concurring specialty-
Often in the law business, where tradition and precedent are significant, situations must be confronted which are especially frustrating. This case illustrates some of the things that are frustrating for me. In that respect it is analogous to cases in which we are obligated to apply the exclusionary rule and thus prevent the truth from being shown in order to accomplish a collateral purpose. See debate on exclusionary rule by Kamisar, Wilkey, Canon and Schlesinger in 62 Judicature at pages 66, 214, 337, 351, 398, 404 (1978).
Even though a statute may be invalid, precedent prevents us from acknowledging it when those urging the invalidity do not have “standing” or, something very similar, they have been unable to show that the invalidity prejudiced them. In Hjelle v. Sornsin Construction Company, 173 N.W.2d 431 (N.D.1970), at syllabus 1, this court held:
“The general rule is that a litigant may assert only his own constitutional rights or immunities. As the Highway Commissioner has presented no weighty countervailing policies to cause an exception to that rule, it is held that he has no standing to assert the constitutional rights of adverse parties.”
What gives the Amish standing, in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972), which Kathy Rivinius and Ronald Weikum do not have? Apparently it is the depth, quality and sincerity of their belief. I do not know who is qualified to make this evaluation — but, under our rules, the trial judge who heard and saw them testify must make it in the first in*232stance, and there is a presumption that he made the evaluation correctly. The fact that Kathy’s and Ronald’s convictions were not described in the same terms — apparently as was the Amish conviction — militates against them when they ask that this court reverse the conclusions reached by the trial court.
The State has argued that Kathy’s and Ronald’s beliefs are short-standing. The Amish traditions demonstrated sincerity because, in part, they had been practiced for three centuries. Kathy and Ronald did not argue that their tradition (Christianity) has been practiced for over nineteen centuries.
The State further argued that inconsistencies detracted from the sincerity of Kathy’s and Ronald’s beliefs. Apparently, when the case was being presented to the trial court, there was no effort made to show that, when judged under worldly standards, there are few Christian principles which cannot be made to appear wholly inconsistent.
If I had been the trial judge in this case, my powers of discernment would have led me to distinguish between Kathy’s and Ronald’s sincerity and that of the “Boo Hoos” of the “Neo-American Church” (United States v. Kuch, 288 F.Supp. 439 (D.D.C.1968)), but not between Kathy’s and Ronald’s sincerity and that of the Amish (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972)). If it were appropriately raised, I would not hesitate to rule that the requirements of Article VIII, § 3, of the North Dakota Constitution relating to teaching “truthfulness, temperance, purity, public spirit, and respect for honest labor of every kind,” are not being met by public schools. But I must stay with the rules that limit my authority as an appellate judge. Because we cannot substitute our judgment for that of the trial court, I concur in the majority opinion authored by Justice Sand.