Santa Fe ISD v. Doe (2000), Part One: Overview

January 3, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
George Washington, Letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia (May 1789)

On the surface, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000) rose out of fairly mundane circumstances to become a defining moment in jurisprudence involving prayer and public schools.

Santa Fe is a rural district in southeastern Texas, not far from Galveston. They typically began home football games with prayer, and included similar expressions of faith during graduation. A Mormon family and a Catholic family complained, and the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court.

The school modified its policies along the way so that students first voted on whether or not to have an opening prayer at games, and when they voted ‘yes’ (there was never really any doubt about that part) they’d cast ballots to see who would lead it. The district hoped this would make the prayer a student-driven activity and insulate it from constitutional challenges.

It didn’t.

The Supreme Court declared that the prayers were taking place on school grounds using school equipment at a function many students were required to attend. While other students were technically there “voluntarily,” the games were such an entrenched part of school culture that for all practical purposes they were an essential school function.

Any praying over the intercom, no matter how authorities attempted to obfuscate the school’s role, violated the establishment clause. This case thus joined Lee v. Weisman (1992), Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), and others dating back to Abington and Engel in the early 1960s as a clear statement of exactly where that “wall” between church and state was to be built – at least when it came to schools and corporate prayer.

The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State…
It must not be forgotten then, that while concern must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting nonbeliever, these same Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference.
James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was: “Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation”…
Lee v. Weisman (1992), Majority Opinion

The First Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits government from promoting one religion over another, or religion in general. Period.

That’s the important stuff to remember if you’re gathering up case law, or studying for an American Government exam. It’s the part which will be cited as precedent in any similar subsequent cases. You really don’t even need to finish this post, let alone read Parts Two or Three.

If that’s you, thanks for dropping by. Catch you later.

But for those choosing to push on… it’s in the specifics of the Santa Fe case that things get interesting. It’s in the personal stories behind the decision that that we find some of the most persuasive examples of why that “wall of separation” is so essential to civilized society.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Horatio Spofford (March 17, 1814)

Children who failed to demonstrate proper “belief” were emotionally and physically abused by peers, and in some cases by adults as well. Teachers, parents, and community leaders manifested behavior and attitudes more consistent with witch hunts from the Middle Ages than educated 21st century professionals at school board meetings.

It was devastating for those not in the majority, and corrupting for those who were.

This isn’t a faith-based blog, so I’ll spare you extensive citing of scriptures revealing what Jesus & Co. thought about defying secular government or prioritizing public demonstrations of faith.

I’ll stick to more traditional sources and clearly documented modern American ideals as expressed by our Founders and interpreted by our courts. Our Framers weren’t perfect, but they were a uniquely talented and educated bunch. They were certainly idealists in some ways, but none were under any illusions regarding human nature.

When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that.
Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion…
The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith.
Engel v. Vitale (1962), Majority Opinion

It will be tempting to dismiss Santa Fe, TX, as an anomaly. A particularly virulent small-town community in which things got out of hand.

But the dynamics are no different from those of any homogenous group willing to blur faith and secular institutions. The stories are chilling, but not because folks in Santa Fe were particularly horrible individuals. The stories are troubling because the folks in Santa Fe are just like most people – and humans in their natural state are tribal, and violent, and cruel, and narrow-minded.

Civilization is difficult. It requires individual sacrifice, and collective authority to maintain the boundaries and behaviors we’ve agreed in our more rational moments are necessary for the good of the whole. Our Framers didn’t enshrine religious liberty in the First Amendment to be poetic, or codify some behavior they figured would naturally occur anyway. It was added to the Constitution because they knew that some very important things required perpetual vigilance and extreme measures to defend.

Natural law may decree that all men have unalienable rights, but it certainly doesn’t suggest it’s in our nature to defend those rights for others at all times in all places, whatever the inconvenience to ourselves. Hence this bit:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
The Declaration of Independence (1776)

Does it hurt anyone for there to be a short prayer at graduation, or over the intercom before a football game? Maybe. Maybe not. We can argue about that another time.

But does it hurt anyone for an institution like a public school to become an arbiter of the supernatural? To pick winners and losers in their spiritual journeys? To supplant parents, clergy, or the Holy Spirit in shaping beliefs and fomenting attitudes?

Probably, yeah. And once it starts, even a little, it’s difficult to leaven only selected parts of that loaf.

Such mingling of state and faith is harmful enough towards dissenters, or anyone not demonstrating sufficient enthusiasm for whichever theology happens to be in vogue that year. That’s what we’ll look at in Part Two. The stories are troubling, but sadly not particularly surprising.

In Part Three, we’ll focus on something too often and too easily overlooked in these discussions – the inherent damage done to faith itself when mingled with secular institutions and authority.

That persecution is harmful for the persecuted is self-evident; that it’s equally harmful for the persecutors is in many ways a far more uncomfortable truth.

The real problem in Santa Fe was much bigger than whether or not to pray at a football game. It was about what the leaven of state authority does to genuine faith, and the corrupting power of monolithic belief. It was about how easily we move from stifling dissent to crushing dissenters – all in the name of defending religious liberty.

It’s why we should remain dogged in our defense of the First Amendment, now and always, no matter how inconvenient and unreasonable it might periodically seem to be. No matter what sorts of nuts it may seem to be protecting.

It’s at such times, strangely enough, that it’s most actively and crucially protecting us.

A Wall of Separation – Wallace v. Jaffree (1985)

September 23, 2016June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

So far we’ve done a brief overview of the concept of a ‘Wall of Separation’ between church and state, and covered a few early Supreme Court Cases involving religion and public schools.

We looked at Everson v. Board of Education (1947) in which the Court determined it was perfectly acceptable for the state to reimburse parents for transportation costs of getting their children to school, whether public or private, sectarian or secular.

Then came Engel v. Vitale (1962), in which the Court made clear that the state could NOT require – or even promote – prayer in public schools as part of the school day. It was followed closely by Abington v. Schempp (1963) in which the same decision applied to the reading of Bible verses or the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

In both of these cases, the Court sought to prevent either the power of government or the foibles of politicians from unduly interfering in man’s reach for the Almighty. This was how they interpreted the Framers’ concerns as expressed in the First Amendment, applicable to the states via the Fourteenth.

In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Court established a “checklist” by which interested parties could determine whether or not something violated the “Establishment Clause” or the “Free Exercise Clause” of the First Amendment. While neither exclusive nor absolute, the “Lemon Test” is still regularly referenced today.

In Stone v. Graham (1980), the Court said boo to the required posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The trend was clear – go easy on pushing your faith via mandatory common education.

But then Reagan took office, and a conservative revolution of sorts swept the nation. I don’t want to overstate the case – it’s not a Disney movie – but for those of you who weren’t there or don’t remember, the Reagan Era wasn’t just a presidential administration. It was a social movement, a political shift, a new dynamic comparable to Kennedy’s “Camelot” in impact – although very different in flavor.

Evangelicals were emboldened and the media and courts demonized as liberals – disgusting and dishonorable, both deceived and deceptive. They were dangers to the nation and everyone in it. Reagan wasn’t evil, at least by modern standards, but he did epitomize a sort of American Exceptionalism in Book-of-Revelation Sauce. The passion and self-righteousness of Ronnie and his adherents pre-empted reason, law, or precedent.

It was in this climate that Alabama decided that Jesus and His legacy simply could not survive much longer without their assistance.

They’d already passed a 1978 law providing for a “moment of silence” each school day “for meditation.” They weren’t the only ones to test this route. Many states or districts instituted some variation of the “moment of silence” after Vitale (1962) and Schempp (1963) made it clear that institutional prayer or other overt Biblization was a no-no.

The “moment of silence” was as much a symbolic move as anything – it served and serves no real purpose or function beyond stepping right up to the line of church-state separation and daring the courts to do something about it. The legislators sponsoring the bill had said as much from the floor; it wasn’t a secret – they were running on their efforts to get prayer back into public schools. Extra credit if you can tell me why that alone should have been enough to invalidate the idea. {Hint: it rhymes with “Women Vest.”}

Alabama took things a step further in 1981, legislating that the moment of silence was to be used “for mediation and voluntary prayer.” Their momentum building, they upped their game yet again in 1982 and instructed teachers to lead “willing students” in a state-written prayer.

Ishmael Jaffree had three kids in Mobile County Public Schools – two in second grade and one in kindergarten. He protested the state-designed prayer, and had plenty of established case law on his side. But that’s not what struck me about his complaint.

Jaffree’s concerns stemmed not from abstract constitutional issues, but from his kindergartener being targeted by other kids for not participating in the prayers. His five-year-old was essentially bullied for not falling into line with state-mandated religious activities.

He wasn’t alone. In a similar case going on in West Virginia at the same time, a Jewish student was challenged by peers for quietly reading during the “moment of silence.” He needed to pray, they told him, or he’d “go to hell with the rest of the Jews.”

Yes, the prayer was technically voluntary – but as anyone in education knows, “voluntary” can mean many different things. In this case, it was legal cover for bad law, an effort to create enough of a loophole to allow Alabama to belittle children for holding to their family’s religious beliefs in ways that didn’t harm or bother anyone, but without the state running afoul of those damned godless liberal judges.

And yes, there comes a time in life – even public school life – where students must be expected to grow up and accept that not everything works the way they want it to and not everyone is nice. We can’t and shouldn’t stop kids from ever saying an unkind word to one another.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the abuse has to be state-sanctioned. That doesn’t mean the state should throw the first pebble then disclaim responsibility when the very children it’s seeking to influence continue the work by throwing stones of their own.

In an interesting wrinkle, the federal district judge who heard this case as it worked its way through the system chose to ignore precedent and declared the laws perfectly constitutional, stating in his decision that “Alabama has the power to establish a State religion if it chooses to do so.” I’m all for waving your little flag at the tank as it rolls through the square, but this wasn’t the powerless standing up to the powerful – this was power trying to take more power.

And it wouldn’t have happened a decade before.

The South was ready to rise again through God, Guns, and the Gipper. Where’s that Confederate Flag and my 12-pack of Keystone?

I promise I’m not blaming every error of the modern world on Ronald Reagan – I was actually quite a fan. But he was wrong when early in his Presidency he proposed a constitutional amendment permitting organized prayer in public schools. He was wrong in his 1984 State of the Union when he asked why “freedom to acknowledge God” couldn’t “be enjoyed again by children in every schoolroom across this land?”

It’s always problematic when we use “freedom” to mean “giving me the power to force you to comply with my beliefs.” Students have always been free to acknowledge God in whatever schoolroom they happen to be. They’ve never been prohibited from praying at appropriate times or discussing their faith with other students, as long as we can have school along the way.

Imagine if President Clinton had insisted that school intercoms, choirs, and bands be used to broadcast, sing, and play Led Zeppelin exclusively, and at least once a day. Is that “bringing back freedom”?

It’s no dis on Zeppelin to suggest that some people much prefer Supertramp, or the Police, or even Etta James. Besides, you have to suspect that it wouldn’t be long before not just ANY Zeppelin would work. If your local Congressman is partial to the B-side of In Through The Out Door, then THAT becomes the only acceptable Zeppelin from here on out. You don’t even get “In The Evening” that way!

Of course you can disagree, but… why do you hate freedom? Are you a threat to our way of life? What are you, Disco?

On a personal note, I must confess that student liberties aside, I’m rather horrified by the use of the Christian faith as this sort of political tire iron. If the God they claim to serve is truly so helpless as to be somehow barred from hallways and classrooms of public schools around the nation, their efforts to facilitate his comeback are both tragic and unwise.

Surely the same Jesus who conquered Death and Hell isn’t lying around half-formed in a forest somewhere, waiting for Wormtail to bring him a few more ingredients for the Holy Cauldron or for Ms. Kravitz to read the right magic prayer out loud enough times.

It’s hard to imagine Paul the Apostle sitting along the road somewhere in Cyrprus, whining that he can’t preach the Gospel until some local legislature makes a rule requiring the Beatitudes be posted in the marketplace or mandating the 23rd Psalm be recited before any and all public lectures.

If your faith only works when government mandates that minors pay it hollow homage, you need a better faith.

But I should probably get back to the case…

While the Bible part and the praying part are consistently prohibited as violations of the Establishment Clause, the “Moment of Silence” has for the most part survived constitutional scrutiny, even while being acknowledged as an “accommodation” of faith – but not an “establishment” or “inhibitor” of faith.

That’s why in Oklahoma, every school day, students are given 5 – 7 seconds to “reflect, meditate, or pray” in any manner not disrupting or distracting those around them. I don’t know about you, but I feel MUCH closer to God as a result. If we were given, say… 12 seconds to work with, who knows what could happen?

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