Court Opinion

ID: 9497849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:01:40.848194+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:27.442384
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
My colleagues ask and answer the question whether inclusion of the Ten Commandments in a display at Elkhart’s County Administration Building endorses religion and thus transgresses the establishment clause of the first amendment, applied to state and local governments by the fourteenth amendment. I have serious doubts about the nature of the question, even on the supposition that the establishment clause affects states in the same way as the national government. See Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, - - -, 124 S.Ct. 2301, 2330-31, 159 L.Ed.2d 98 (2004) (Thomas, J., concurring). “Endorsement” differs from “establishment.” A government does not “establish” milk as the national beverage when it endorses milk as part of a sound diet.
“Establishment” entails coercion: either mandatory religious observance or mandatory support (via taxes) for clergy on the public payroll. See Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State 89-107 (2002); Leonard W. Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (1986); Michael W. McConnell, Establishment and Disestablishment at the Founding, Part I: Establishment of Religion, 44 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 2105 (2003); Michael W. McConnell, Coercion: The Lost Element of Establishment, 27 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 933 (1986). See also American Jewish Congress v. Chicago, 827 F.2d 120, 128-40 (7th Cir.1987) (Easter-brook, J., dissenting). Equating “endorsement” with “establishment” is a novelty with neither linguistic nor historical provenance. Our obligation to implement the *870Supreme Court’s holdings does not require us to predict how an approach espoused by a few Justices, and applied unpredictably under a decision (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971)) that a majority of sitting Justices has disavowed (though never at the same time), would deal with a situation the Court has yet to address. We should use the Constitution’s own language and rules.
Words do not coerce. See Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S.Ct. 1759, 114 L.Ed.2d 233 (1991). A barrage of advertisements tempting young people to join the military does not oblige anyone to do so; no more does display of the Ten Commandments coerce support for religion. The Magna Carta (which begins “John, by the grace of God, king of England ... ”) is part of this display, yet Elkhart County does not establish divine-right monarchy. Lady Justice, derived from the Greek goddess Themis, is in the display, but Elkhart County has not established the ancient pantheon as its religion. No one would understand any document’s presence in this display to suggest that Elkhart County imposes either legal or social sanctions on nonbelievers. Cf. Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 310-13, 120 S.Ct. 2266, 147 L.Ed.2d 295 (2000) (prayer before public high school event entails social disapproval of those who do not participate, and thus coerces religious conformity).
What the display may do is give offense, either to persons outside the religious tradition that includes the Book of Exodus or to those who believe that religion and government should be hermetically separated. Yet Themis may offend Christians (and all icons offend Muslims), the military’s ads offend religious pacifists, and the message in Rust supports one religious perspective on human life while deprecating others. See also Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 881-87, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992) (states may require physicians to tell women about the risks of abortion and the advantages of childbirth). Public policies and arguments pro and con about them often give offense, as do curricular choices in public schools. See Webster v. New Lenox School District, 917 F.2d 1004 (7th Cir.1990). But the rebuke implied when a governmental body supports a point of view that any given person finds contemptible (or believes should be left to the private sector) is a great distance from “coercion.” So great a distance, indeed, that the insulted person lacks standing to sue.
Just last Term the Court made that point in Newdow when holding that a father’s dismay at knowing that public schools call on his daughter to recite “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance does not support litigation. Only the daughter — the person potentially coerced — or a custodial parent acting as her next Mend could obtain judicial review. See also Crowley v. McKinney, 400 F.3d 965, 970-71 (7th Cir.2005). Newdow instantiates the rule announced in Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United For Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 482-90, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982), that offense taken at the government’s complicity in religion does not create standing. Cf. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). Otherwise there would be universal standing: anyone could contest any public policy or action he disliked. There must be a concrete injury. All our plaintiff alleges, however, is dismay at seeing the Ten Commandments.
Like other appellate courts, we have held that changing one’s daily route to avoid coming across a religious display, or staying out of a park, is enough of a concrete effect to establish injury in fact. *871See, e.g., ACLU v. St. Charles, 794 F.2d 265, 267-69 (7th Cir.1986); Doe v. Crestwood, 917 F.2d 1476, 1478 (7th Cir.1990). Books does not contend that he has been driven out of the County Administration Building by the display. To the contrary, he alleges that he visits the building once a year to apply for a waiver of the excise tax on his car, and that he has not changed his conduct since the display was installed. Thus he alleges indignation and nothing else.
Several decisions of this circuit have reduced Valley Forge to a hollow shell, holding for example that it is enough to “allege standing” without establishing injury in fact, see Harris v. Zion, 927 F.2d 1401 (7th Cir.1991), or that dismay while walking past a monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments is a cognizable injury, see Books v. Elkhart, 235 F.3d 292, 299-301 (7th Cir.2000) (Books I). The approach taken by Harris, problematic at the outset, see 927 F.2d at 1419-22 (East-erbrook, J., dissenting), was disapproved in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 559-62, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992), which holds that injury in fact must be proved and not just asserted. And the conclusion of Books I that seeing an unwelcome object equals injury in fact is impossible to reconcile with Valley Forge, for it treats observation simpliciter as the injury. If that were right, the plaintiff in Valley Forge should have been allowed to litigate. What the Supreme Court held, however, is that “the psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees” (454 U.S. at 485, 102 S.Ct. 752) (emphasis added), is not an “injury in fact” for constitutional purposes.
Instead of following Books I we should overrule it as inconsistent with Valley Forge, a decision that Books I did not mention. Although Newdow devotes most of its attention to a prudential question about the effect of a child-custody decree, it starts with an assumption shared by all of the Justices: that Newdow’s disgust at knowing that pupils recite the phrase “under God” was not enough to support constitutional litigation. “The command to guard jealously and exercise rarely our power to make constitutional pronouncements requires strictest adherence when matters of great national significance are at stake.” 542 U.S. at -, 124 S.Ct. at 2308. That reflects an approach at odds with Books I, which assumed that judges should address constitutional grievances whether or not the plaintiff can show concrete injury.
Decisions such as Books I drain the case-or-controversy requirement of meaning. Valley Forge requires us to separate injured from ideological plaintiffs; Books I fails to do this. We should set things to rights rather than repeat the mistake. Therefore, unlike my colleagues, who resolve this appeal on the merits, I would vacate the district court’s judgment and remand with instructions to dismiss the complaint for want of standing.