A federal appeals court has upheld the observance of one minute of silence following the Pledge of Allegiance for students in public schools in Texas, affirming that the practice is not an unconstitutional endorsement either of religious or non-religious activities.
“The statute is facially neutral between religious and non-religious activities that students can choose to engage in during the moment of silence,” said the ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “As Justice O’Connor stated in her ‘Wallace’ concurrence: ‘It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful school children.'”
The 5th Circuit ruling came in a case in which the non-profit Alliance Defense Fund filed a friend-of-the-court brief.
ADF ally Liberty Legal Institute also filed a brief and represented school children in the case.
“A moment of silence is not a government endorsement of religion just because someone might use the time for prayer,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “No student is compelled to pray under the Texas law. The 5th Circuit was right to uphold the district court’s determination that the law is not an establishment of religion.”
Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel for Liberty Legal, said, “This law is about freedom. Students have the freedom to pray, meditate, or simply think about their day. It took real intolerance for someone to sue to try to stop students from choosing prayer as their option.”
State law provides in Texas that one minute per day at each public school be set aside to allow students to “reflect, pray, meditate, or engage in any other silent activity that is not likely to interfere with or distract another student.”
In 2006, David and Shannon Croft, parents of three students in the Carrolton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, sued, alleging the minute of silence “causes harm” to their children and violates their First Amendment rights.
The 5th Circuit panel, however, rejected the concerns, saying, “None of the courts examining moment of silence statutes have found that the primary effect has been to advance or inhibit religion, and the Crofts point to no case law that supports their contentions.”
The court continued, “The Crofts have standing to challenge the 2003 Amendments. But the amendments are constitutional and satisfy all three prongs of the ‘Lemon’
analysis. There is no excessive entanglement, and the primary effect of the
amendments is not to advance religion. The most difficult prong – for this and
for moment of silence statutes generally – is legislative purpose.
“But our review
of legislative history is deferential, and such deference leads to an adequate
secular purpose in this case,” the court said. “Here, that
intent was to promote patriotism and allow for a moment of quiet contemplation.
These are valid secular purposes, and are not outweighed by limited legislative
history showing that some legislators may have been motivated by religion.”
