Croft v. Perry, No. 06-434 (N.D. Tex. Jan. 2, 2008)
A Texas federal district court has ruled that the state’s moment of silence law does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The statute requires local school boards to set aside one minute at each school to permit students, as they choose, to “reflect, pray, meditate, or engage in any other silent activity that is not likely to interfere with or distract another student.” A suit brought by the parents on behalf of their children against the State of Texas and Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District initially alleged that the statute was unconstitutional both on its face and as applied in the school district. The parents later agreed to dismiss the district from the suit because they were challenging the statute, which the district’s policy merely implemented. Both sides then moved for summary judgment on the remaining facial challenge.
The court upheld the law under the U.S. Supreme Court’s three-pronged test in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). The court identified four key cases that have applied the Lemon test to state-enacted moment of silence statutes: Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985); Bown v. Gwinnett County School District, 112 F.3d 1464 (11th Cir. 1997); Brown v. Gilmore, 258 F.3d 265 (4th Cir. 2001); and May v. Cooperman, 780 F.2d 240 (3d. Cir. 1985). Both Wallace and May found the challenged statutes unconstitutional because their legislative histories revealed a religious purpose rather than the secular purpose required by the first prong of Lemon. Bown and Brown, on the other hand, found nothing in those statutes’ legislative histories that would override the “express statutory language articulating a clear secular purpose and also disclaiming a religious purpose” and nothing in the statutes that violated the primary effect and entanglement prongs of Lemon. The district court rejected the parents’ argument that all moment of silence laws are inherently unconstitutional, back-door attempts to introduce state-sponsored prayer in school. The U.S. Supreme Court has clearly indicated that moment of silence laws need not jeopardize the religious liberties of any members of the community or threaten the separation of church and state, the court noted.
Turning to Lemon’s “secular purpose” prong, the court took an extensive look at the statute’s legislative history. While conceding that the question was a close one, the court concluded that the statute had legitimate secular purposes that were not shams. Although some legislators did voice a purpose to “put prayer back in schools,” the overall evidence revealed that the legislature was not acting in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court. The court cited Governor Rick Perry’s statement of three “legitimate and secular” purposes: patriotism, accommodation, and providing a period for thoughtful contemplation. A reasonable observer would not find the addition of the word “pray” in the legislation to operate as an endorsement of religion, the court continued, the court found, because prayer “was already an implied option under the prior statute, and making explicit what was already implied and justified by another state law, should not cause the modification to be struck down.” The court then quickly disposed of Lemon’s other prongs, finding that the primary effect of the statute was not to advance or inhibit religion and that the parents had failed to show how the statute fosters excessive entanglement between government and religion.
Croft v. Perry, No. 06-434 (N.D. Tex. Jan. 2, 2008)
[Editor’s Note: In contrast, two months ago a U.S. district court in Illinois recently reached the opposite conclusion as to that state’s moment of silence law, which was amended in 1990 to specify that students may initiate non-disruptive prayer. In a decision summarized below, the court temporarily enjoined a school district from implementing the law, finding that the plaintiff’s claims that the law is unconstitutionally vague and violates the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses were likely to succeed on the merits.]
NSBA School Law pages on Sherman v. Twp. High Sch. Dist. 214