Court Opinion

ID: 9558747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:16:21.546147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:34.385705
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.,
Concurring.—I concur in Justice Kennard’s well-reasoned opinion holding that religious invocations and benedictions at public high school graduation ceremonies violate both the federal and California Constitutions. I write separately to explain further why our state charter compels this result. Federal cases to which I refer are merely illustrative; in my view our state authorities are controlling in this matter.
*906As Justice Brennan reminds us, “state courts cannot rest when they have afforded their citizens the full protections of the federal Constitution. State constitutions, too, are a font of individual liberties, their protections often extending beyond those required by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of federal law.” (Brennan, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights (1977) 90 Harv. L. Rev. 489, 491.) Chief Justice Rehnquist reached a similar conclusion for a unanimous court in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980) 447 U.S. 74, 81 [64 L.Ed.2d 741, 752, 100 S.Ct. 2035]: the states may grant “individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution. ...”
Indeed, as the highest court of this state, we are independently responsible for safeguarding the rights of our citizens. State courts are, and should be, the first line of defense for individual liberties in the federal system. It is unnecessary to rest our decision on federal authority when the California Constitution alone provides an independent and adequate state constitutional basis on which to decide. (See, e.g., People v. Brisendine (1975) 13 Cal.3d 528, 551 [119 Cal.Rptr. 315, 531 P.2d 1099].)
In his separate concurrence the Chief Justice virtually begs the Supreme Court to relieve us of our duty under the Constitution of California. Such a supplication is unprecedented. We are not a branch of the federal judiciary; we are a court created by the Constitution of California and we owe our primary obligation to that fundamental document. Only if an issue cannot be determined with finality under state constitutional doctrine do we turn to federal authority for assistance.
The Chief Justice suggests that after federal review we may possibly consider state constitutional issues. This is not only the horse trailing the cart, it results in unnecessary delay, additional costs to the parties—one here being a tiny school district—and a duplicative burden on judicial resources. State law and state constitutional principles should be our first, not our last, referent.
The Minnesota Supreme Court experience should be a lesson to us. In State v. Hershberger (Minn. 1989) 444 N.W.2d 282, the court held the Amish are entitled to religious exemption from certain traffic requirements. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari, took the case over, and then remanded for consideration in the light of its opinion in Employment Div. Dept, of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith (1990) 494 U.S. 872 [108 L.Ed.2d 876, 110 S.Ct. 1595] [holding no religious exemption for peyote users].
On remand, the Minnesota court declined to follow Smith, and instead, relying on the state Constitution, reiterated its original conclusion (State v. *907Hershberger (Minn. 1990) 462 N.W.2d 393). While the ultimate result in Minnesota was a vindication of state constitutionalism, the delay in achieving finality, the time and expense of unnecessary proceedings, and the duplicative burden on judicial resources, should caution us against traveling the same route in the instant case.
I
It is undisputed that provisions of the California Constitution are not dependent for their meaning on the federal Constitution. (Cal. Const., art. I, §24; People v. Brisendine, supra, 13 Cal. 3d at p. 551.) Particularly with regard to the provisions of the California Constitution that apply to religion in public schools (Cal. Const., art. I, § 4, art. XVI, § 5, art. IX, § 8), the different history of our charter justifies the difference in interpretation. It is true that in Marsh v. Chambers (1983) 463 U.S. 783, 787 [77 L.Ed.2d 1019, 1024-1025, 103 S.Ct. 3330], the United States Supreme Court pointed to the entanglement of government and religion in post-Colonial America to support its conclusion that the drafters of the First Amendment would not have prohibited invocational prayer. That historical discussion, however, is irrelevant to the question of the meaning of the California Constitution. Undoubtedly, there had been considerable entanglement of church and state in Spanish California, but the delegates to the 1849 constitutional convention had no intention of returning to such a relationship.1 Rather, the convention delegates scrutinized the United States Constitution and the constitutions of the other states, and carefully selected the language that provided the greatest level of protection to California citizens.
For example, article I, section 4, of the California Constitution (hereafter article I, section 4) had its origin in the New York Constitution, and first appeared at the New York Constitutional Convention of 1777. It was chosen by the delegates to the California Constitutional Convention of 1849 over a provision of the Virginia Constitution that referred to the duty owed the “Creator” and the duty of “Christian forbearance, love and charity.” (25 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen. 316, 319 (1955).) As originally adopted, it provided, “The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed in this state.” (Cal. Const, of 1849, art. I, § 4.) Note particularly the prohibition against preference.
*908This absolute separation of church and state was firmly recognized from the initial days of California jurisprudence. As early as 1858, Chief Justice Terry wrote in Ex parte Newman (1858) 9 Cal. 502, 506-507: “When our liberties were acquired, our republican form of government adopted, and our Constitution framed, we deemed that we had attained not only toleration, but religious liberty in its largest sense—a complete separation between Church and State .... ‘All religious despotism commences by combination and influence, and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institution of a country, the civil power soon bends under it, and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequences. . . . What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights; they were not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights of which the government cannot deprive any portion of her citizens, however small.’”
Chief Justice Terry held invalid under the first article of the original California Constitution a legislative enactment requiring observance of the sabbath. Much like the dissent in the instant case, it was argued that the day of rest on the sabbath had merely a civil purpose, a sort of compulsory Sunday togetherness, and that mankind was “in the habit of working too much, and thereby entailing evil upon society” (9 Cal. at p. 508). Chief Justice Terry for the court brushed aside that contention: “The truth is, however much it may be disguised, that this one day of rest is a purely religious idea . . . whether it be the Friday of the Mohammedan, the Saturday of the Israelite, or the Sunday of the Christian . . . .” (Id. at p. 509.)
Justice Burnett agreed with Terry, and in his concurrence declared that “when there is no ground or necessity upon which a principle can rest but a religious one, then the [California] Constitution steps in and says that you shall not enforce it by authority of law.” (9 Cal. at p. 513, italics in original.) He continued, “it is clear that the scope and purpose of the Constitution was to assert the great, broad principle of religious freedom for all—for the believer and the unbeliever.” (Ibid.)
Justice Field, in dissent, used a dichotomy comparable to that employed by the dissent in the instant case. On the one hand he argued that the Sunday closing law dealt with “business matters, not religious duties . . . only a rule of civil conduct.” (9 Cal. at p. 519.) Then, to the contrary, he defended the religious content, insisting that “Christianity is the prevailing faith of our people; it is the basis of our civilization; and that its spirit should infuse itself into and humanize our laws, is [] natural. . . .” (Id. at pp. 523-524.)
*909As Field’s biographer, Carl Brent Swisher, wrote, this case tells much about Field, although “Its value for this purpose is limited by the fact that his ideas undoubtedly changed from time to time.” (Swisher, Stephen J. Field: Craftsman of the Law (1963) p. 81.)
When Ex parte Andrews (1861) 18 Cal. 678, came before the court, Justices Baldwin and Cope had succeeded Terry and Burnett. Totally ignoring stare decisis, they joined Field in upholding a subsequent legislative enactment on Sunday closing.2
For additional emphasis, in 1879 the delegates to the state constitutional convention of that year amended article I, section 4, to provide that in California the free exercise of religion shall be “guaranteed,” not simply “allowed.” The words of the member offering the amendment demonstrate the delegates’ concern about religious freedom and the separation of church and state: “The word ‘allowed’ conveys the idea that the right of government to disallow or deny exists. Now, sir, I deny that any Government or any power on earth has a right to grant or deny freedom of religious belief. No such power exists, and where it is attempted to be enforced, it is simply despotism.” (3 Debates & Proceedings, Cal. Const. Convention 1878-1879, p. 1171 (remarks of Mr. O’Sullivan).)
The strong desire of the framers of the California Constitution for governmental neutrality in matters of religion is also evidenced by the adoption in 1879 of what is now article XVI, section 5, of the California Constitution (hereafter article XVI, section 5), which forbids governmental “aid of any religious sect, church, creed or sectarian purpose.” This clause has aptly been called “the definitive statement of the principle of government impartiality in the field of religion.” (37 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen. 105, 107 (1961).)
Further proof of the framers’ intent to build a Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and state in California is found in article IX, section 8, of our charter, also adopted in 1879, forbidding both support for “sectarian and denomination schools” and the teaching of sectarian and denomina*910tional doctrine in public schools. This provision among others was relied on by Attorney General Webb when he issued an opinion in 1903 that Bible reading in our public schools was unconstitutional—almost 60 years before the United States Supreme Court ruled prayer in public school to be unconstitutional. (Engel v. Vitale (1962) 370 U.S. 421 [8 L.Ed.2d 601, 82 S.Ct. 1261, 86 A.L.R.2d 1285].)
II
Defendant Morongo Unified School District’s religious invocations and benedictions violate both article I, section 4, and article XVI, section 5. I discuss each clause in turn.

Article I, section 4

Article I, section 4, provides, “Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed. . . . The Legislature shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” To be sure, the establishment clause of this section is virtually identical to its federal counterpart.3 But the free exercise clause (hereafter the preference clause) of article I, section 4, is without parallel in the federal Constitution. The Attorney General has emphasized the broad scope of the preference clause: “It would be difficult to imagine a more sweeping statement of the principle of governmental impartiality in the field of religion.” (25 Ops.Cal. Atty.Gen. 316, 319 (1955).) Our case law has also recognized the strength of this clause, and acknowledged that in some instances it might warrant a separation of church and state more strict than that called for in the federal Constitution. As we stated in Fox v. City of Los Angeles (1978) 22 Cal.3d 792, 796 [150 Cal.Rptr. 867, 587 P.2d 663], under article I, section 4, “Preference thus is forbidden even when there is no discrimination. The *911current interpretations of the United States Constitution may not be that comprehensive.”
In Fox, we ruled unconstitutional the display of a large Latin cross on a city hall. We pointed out that the walls of city hall were not used as bulletin boards; and we reasoned that “To illuminate only the Latin cross . . . does seem preferential when comparable recognition of other religious symbols is impracticable.” (Fox v. City of Los Angeles, supra, 22 Cal.3d at p. 797.) We rejected the city’s rationalization that illumination of the cross during both Latin and Eastern Orthodox holidays constitutes “interfaith recognition” that endows the illumination of the cross with a secular purpose because of the indisputable proreligious and sectarian effect of the city’s actions: “We cannot conclude here that the City, particularly as to Easter holidays, did not ‘promote . . . such spiritual content.’ Easter crosses differ from Easter bunnies, just as Christmas crosses differ from Christmas trees and Santa Claus.” (Id. at p. 798.)
The preference clause was also partly relied on in Feminist Women’s Health Center, Inc. v. Philibosian (1984) 157 Cal.App.3d 1076 [203 Cal.Rptr. 918]. There, the court held unconstitutional the Los Angeles District Attorney’s plan to bury aborted fetuses at a memorial park that had agreed to permit a religious organization to hold a memorial ceremony. The court stressed that the preference clause looks to the effects, not the intent, of the governmental action. As the court stated: “Whatever the district attorney’s motive, a preference will be objectively demonstrated if the fetuses are delivered to [the burial site] in these circumstances. As the concurring opinion observed in Fox: ‘We must never forget that the religious freedom of every person is threatened whenever government associates its [power] with one particular religious tradition. The threat today may seem small, but the breach in principle is large.’ (Fox v. City of Los Angeles, supra, at p. 805.)” (Id. at p. 1092.)
In Mandel v. Hodges (1976) 54 Cal.App.3d 596 [127 Cal.Rptr. 244, 90 A.L.R.3d 728], the court held unconstitutional an order by the Governor to close state offices between noon and 3 p.m. on Good Friday, partly on preference clause grounds. The court reasoned that the Governor’s Good Friday order would produce both of the results that the clause prohibits: “Because it has appointed an exclusively Christian holy day as a paid ‘holiday’ for all pertinent purposes affecting state offices and employees, it amounts to ‘discrimination’ against all non-Christian religions and ‘preference’ of those which are Christian.” (Id. at p. 617.)
From these decisions, we learn that the preference clause seeks to prevent government from giving any advantage to religion in California. The *912relevant inquiry is whether government has granted a benefit to a religion or religion in general that is not granted to society at large. Once government bestows that differential benefit on religion, it has acted unconstitutionally in this state.4
Thus the issue is whether the challenged program of the Morongo Unified School District establishes an unconstitutional preference in violation of article I, section 4. I conclude that it does. The use of a theistic prayer to “solemnize” a high school graduation confers a benefit on a particular form of religious expression by granting it a special, rather exalted, place at the commencement of an important and otherwise secular ceremony. This form of prayer, and the religious world view that underlies it, is thereby invested with the prestige with which the importance of the occasion endows it. Further, the selection of a member of the clergy for the express purpose of performing a religious act—a prayer—clearly grants a preferential benefit to religion and to a particular religion. Such a practice is therefore unconstitutional under article I, section 4.

Article XVI, section 5

Morongo Unified School District’s religious invocation also violates article XVI, section 5. That section provides in pertinent part, “Neither the Legislature, nor any county, city and county, township, school district or other municipal corporation, shall ever . . . grant anything to or in aid of any religious sect, church, creed, or sectarian purpose.” As with article I, section 4, this clause has been interpreted broadly: “The section [] forbids more than the appropriation or payment of public funds to support sectarian institutions. It bans any official involvement, whatever its form, which has the direct, immediate, and substantial effect of promoting religious purposes.” (California Educational Facilities Authority v. Priest (1974) 12 Cal.3d 593, 605, fn. 12 [116 Cal.Rptr. 361, 526 P.2d 513].)
In Priest, we recounted the history of article XVI, section 5: “An examination of the debates of the constitutional convention which drafted the *913Constitution of 1879 indicates that the provision was intended to insure the separation of church and state and to guarantee that the power, authority, and financial resources of the government shall never be devoted to the advancement or support of religious or sectarian purposes.” (California Educational Facilities Authority v. Priest, supra, 12 Cal.3d at p. 604; see also Fox v. City of Los Angeles, supra, 22 Cal. 3d 792, 802-803 (conc. opn. of Bird, C. J.).) We held that legislation through which colleges could obtain financing for improving facilities at a lower rate of interest than would otherwise be available through conventional financing sources was not inconsistent with the provision because “The section has never been interpreted ... to prohibit a religious institution from receiving an indirect, remote, and incidental benefit from a statute which has a secular primary purpose.” (12 Cal.3d at p. 605.)
On the other hand, in California Teachers Assn. v. Riles (1981) 29 Cal. 3d 794 [176 Cal.Rptr. 300, 632 P.2d 953], we relied on article XVI, section 5, to invalidate legislation authorizing public school districts to lend secular textbooks to parochial school students. We rejected decisions of the United States Supreme Court suggesting that a statute is insulated from challenge if a child will be aided by an expenditure of public money (the “child benefit” theory), reasoning that the school itself received a benefit that could not be characterized as indirect, remote or incidental. (Id. at p. 810.) In doing so, we set forth a two-part test for analyzing the validity of governmental aid under article XVI, section 5: we consider first whether the aid is direct or indirect, and second whether the nature of the aid is substantial or incidental. (See Note, Rebuilding the Wall Between Church and State: Public Sponsorship of Religious Displays Under the Federal and California Constitutions (1986) 37 Hastings L.J. 499, 532.)
Here, the Morongo Unified School District invites to its graduation ceremonies Christian clergy who pray in religious terms. As explained above, the use of such prayers provides direct and exclusive benefit to one religion “in the intangible form of prestige and power” (Fox v. City of Los Angeles, supra, 22 Cal.3d at p. 802 (conc. opn. of Bird, C. J.)), and discriminates against those who prefer other religions or no religion.
Moreover, I cannot find that this benefit to religion is merely incidental. In California Teachers Assn. v. Riles, supra, 29 Cal. 3d 794, we distinguished the textbook loan program from generalized governmental services provided to all schools (i.e., fire and police protection) partly on the ground that the latter services have no doctrinal content. Here, however, it cannot be maintained that an invocational prayer at a high school graduation has no doctrinal content; indeed, this is precisely the purpose of prayer. As a result, prayers in public school ceremonies are viewed, by proponents and *914opponents alike, as state endorsement of the religious views embodied in those prayers, and as a tacit rejection of inconsistent views.5
An Oregon court relied on a similar provision in its state Constitution to hold that a religious invocation in a high school commencement exercise violated article I, section 5, of the Oregon Constitution. (Kay v. David Douglas Sch. Dist. No. 40 (1986) 79 Ore.App. 384 [719 P.2d 875].)6 That clause provides, “No money shall be drawn from the treasury for the benefit of any religeous [sic] or theological institution, nor shall any money be appropriated for the payment of any religeous [s/c] services in either house of the Legislative Assembly.” Although the expenditure of public funds was minimal, the court reasoned that “the school district’s affirmative decision directing that a prayer, rather than some other appropriate non-religious statement or reading, be included in this important school event conveyed the message that it had given its endorsement to prayer and to religion. The inclusion of the prayer would have crossed the line from the accommodation of religion to an impermissible appearance of sponsorship.” (719 P.2d at p. 880.)
I conclude that the religious invocations and benedictions in question here have a direct and immediate effect of promoting religious purposes in violation of article XVI, section 5.
Broussard, J., concurred.

 The first conquest of California was not accomplished by the military, but by the Franciscans. From the first mission at San Diego de Alcala in 1769, “Alta California found time somehow for the longest colonial nap on record. It basked lazily in the sun from 1769 until the American conquest in 1846.” (Phillips, Big Wayward Girl: An Informal Political History of California (1968) p. 6.) But with the influx of persons of all beliefs during the gold rush years of 1848 and 1849, commentator Herbert Phillips found only one word appropriate for religiously controlled Spanish California: Adiós. (Id. at p. 10.)

 This court’s upholding the constitutionality of Sunday closing laws does not in any way imply that the framers of the California Constitution intended anything less than a strict separation between church and state. The court in Ex parte Jentzsch (1896) 112 Cal. 468, 471-472 [44 P. 803], explained as follows: “In construing so-called Sunday laws, courts have variously regarded them, some from a religious view, others from a secular, and still others from an anomalous commingling of both. In this state they have never been upheld from a religious standpoint. Under a constitution which guarantees to all equal liberty of religion and conscience, any law which forbids an act not in itself contra bonos mores, because that act is repugnant to the beliefs of one religious sect, of necessity interferes with the liberty of those who hold to other beliefs or to none at all. ...[]]] So it has come to be the established rule in this state to view and construe such laws as civil and secular enactments. [Citations.]”

 The majority conclude, and I agree, that the invocational prayers at issue here violate the establishment clause of the California Constitution under the test set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1973) 403 U.S. 602 [29 L.Ed.2d 745, 91 S.Ct. 2105]. However, it is clear from the drafters’ debates that article I, section 24, of the state Constitution (“Rights guaranteed by this Constitution are not dependent on those guaranteed by the United States Constitution”) was specifically intended to allow our state courts to give greater scope to the California Constitution than that required by the federal high court to similar, or even identical, language of the United States Constitution. (See 1970 Debates, Cal. Const. Revision Com., remarks of Commissioners Newman, Kleps, and Enersen, pp. 265-279.) Therefore, although I agree with the use of the Lemon v. Kurtzman test in this case, in interpreting the state establishment clause we are not exclusively bound by any particular application of that test by federal authority. (See also Gaffney v. State Department of Education (1974) 192 Neb. 358 [220 N.W.2d 550, 554] [“The attempt to transpose and inject the First Amendment by carrying on tests of secular purpose, primary effect of aiding religion, and governmental entanglement or political divisiveness, into the interpretation of a state constitutional provision such as ours, must be rejected.”].)

 One exception to this general rule should be noted. A benefit conferred on religion will not be considered an unconstitutional preference if it occurs in a forum accessible to a multitude of viewpoints and forms of expression, both religious and secular. Thus, the public library, the museum-like city hall rotunda, the multicultural billboard hypothesized in Fox v. City of Los Angeles, supra, 22 Cal.3d 792, are limited-purpose public forums (see Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’Assn. (1983) 460 U.S. 37, 46, fn. 7 [74 L.Ed.2d 794, 805, 103 S.Ct. 948]; Widmar v. Vincent (1981) 454 U.S. 263, 267-268 [70 L.Ed.2d 440, 445-446, 102 S.Ct. 269]); the denial of religious expression in these forums would raise the specter of discrimination against religion. Under such circumstances, the granting of access to religious expression in a public forum does not constitute an unconstitutional preference. (See Note, Fox v. City of Los Angeles: Preference of Religion and the Use of Independent State Constitutional Grounds (1980) 68 Cal.L.Rev. 666, 672-673.)

 The dissent of Justice Panelli takes several inconsistent approaches to this case. First, it seems to argue that our Founding Fathers were religious men and therefore religion in the public schools was to be reasonably expected. Second, the dissent insists that the prayers in this case were secular in purpose, though it would seem obvious that secular prayer is an oxymoron. Next, the dissent appears to tell us that the school prayers here were not lengthy in duration and therefore not much harm would result. Finally, the opinion appears to maintain that the California Constitution and its authors really did not believe in separation of church and state.
The authorities relied on by the dissent prove unpersuasive. Reliance on “released time” cases reveals a failure to appreciate the distinction between released time—in which the religious practices take place in church and away from public schools—and this case—in which the prayers were given in a public school environment. Reliance on cases allowing the injection of religious phrases into legislative halls and some political ceremonies also fails to appreciate that same distinction: once again here the prayers took place in a public school environment. '
None of the foregoing justifies the dissent’s apparent approval of what it describes as “holes in the wall” of separation between church and state. Nor does it justify the dissent’s proposed further demolition of that historic wall.

 The injunction issued by the court to prevent the religious invocation was later overturned by the Supreme Court of Oregon, solely on the ground that the ceremonies had already been held and therefore there was no longer a justiciable controversy. (Kay v. David Douglas Sch. Dist. No. 40 (1987) 303 Ore. 574 [738 P.2d 1389].)