WALLACE V. JAFFREE

Wallace v. Jaffree enjoys the dubious distinction of being listed as one of the ten worst non-Supreme Court decisions in Bernard Schwartz's A Book of Legal Lists. The case involved a court challenge to the constitutionality of an Alabama statute authorizing a daily period of silence in Alabama's public schools for meditation or voluntary prayer.

The opinion from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama was written by Chief Judge W. Brevard Hand. It came to the surprising conclusion that the Establishment Clause of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited only the federal government from establishing a state religion and that the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment did not make the prohibition binding on the states. Thus, reasoned Judge Hand, the federal Constitution presented no bar to Alabama's establishment of a state religion. Judge Hand found that "the relevant legislative history surrounding the adoption of both the First Amendment and of the Fourteenth Amendment, together with the plain language of those amendments, leaves no doubt that those amendments were not intended to forbid religious prayers in the schools which the states and their political subdivisions mandate." Jaffree, 554 F. Supp. at 1128.] In Jaffree, the district court thus openly rejected decades of settled Supreme Court precedents reaching the opposite conclusion.

Judge Hand's opinion was delivered on January 14, 1983. His remarkable conclusions were quickly appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, and the disappointed plaintiff, Jaffree, also made a simultaneous application for a stay to the U.S. Supreme Court. On February 11, 1983, Justice Powell granted Jaffree's application for a stay of Judge Hand's opinion. Justice lewis f. powell stated that the district court was bound by the Supreme Court's previous decisions, which held that the Establishment Clause, as made applicable to the states by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, does indeed prohibit a state from authorizing prayer in the public schools.

The appeal was argued before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed Judge Hand's opinion on May 12, 1983 (Jaffree v. Wallace, 705 F.2d 1526, 1536 [11th Cir. 1983]). The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that both Alabama Code sections in question, § 16-1-20.1 and § 16-1-20.2, were unconstitutional (Jaffree, 705 F.2d at 1535-36). The Eleventh Circuit also agreed with Justice Powell that the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause cases were clear and controlling on the facts as presented to Judge Hand.

In its opinion, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit acknowledged the extensive scholarly debate over the interplay between the First and Fourteenth Amendments; however, the court made it clear that the U.S. Supreme Court had already considered and decided the historical implications surrounding the Establishment Clause and concluded that its present interpretation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments is consistent with the historical evidence. In explicit language, the Court of Appeals reiterated that the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and laws; its interpretations may not be disregarded (Jaffree, 705 F.2d at 1532).

The state subsequently appealed the ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Eventually, Wallace v. Jaffree reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court refused to question the application of the Establishment Clause to the states. Jaffree presented the Supreme Court with an opportunity to reexamine the incorporation of the Establishment Clause, if the Court had seen any reason to do so. But not a single justice on the Supreme Court expressed any desire to reconsider the Supreme Court decisions which had consistently applied the Establishment Clause to the states. The justices refused to comment at length on the district court's remarkable conclusion that the federal Constitution imposes no obstacle to Alabama's establishment of a state religion. But the Court did find it appropriate to restate how firmly embedded in constitutional jurisprudence is the proposition that the states are restrained from curtailing individual freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

Justice sandra day o'connor wrote a concurring opinion, stating that the First and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees preclude the federal and state governments from making any law establishing a government-sponsored religion.

Three members of the Supreme Court dissented in Jaffree: Chief Justice warren burger, Justice byron r. white, and Justice william h. rehnquist. Chief Justice Burger and Justice White did not challenge the Court's previous decisions applying the Establishment Clause to the states, but Justice Rehnquist focused his dissent on what he believed is the proper reading of the Establishment Clause. Instead of the metaphorical "wall of separation" between church and state, he concluded that the Founders intended for the Establishment Clause to prevent the federal government from establishing a national church or preferring one religious denomination over another. His dissent did not suggest that he had any intention of reexamining the application of the First Amendment to the states. Rather, he accepted without comment the incorporation of the First Amendment and focused his comments on the proper scope of application for the Establishment Clause.

further readings

Fraser, James W. 1999. Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America. New York: St. Martin's.

Schwartz, Bernard. 1997. A Book of Legal Lists: The Best and Worst in American Law. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Urofsky, Melvin I. 2002. Religious Freedom: Rights and Liberties under the Law. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO.

cross-references

Religion.

Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985), argued 4 Dec. 1984, decided 4 June 1985 by vote of 6 to 3; Stevens for the Court, Powell concurring, O'Connor concurring in the judgment, Burger, White, and Rehnquist in dissent. Public opinion has never endorsed the Supreme Court's school prayer decisions. Since 1961, more than 75 percent of those questioned by the Gallup Poll have consistently supported reintroduction of formal prayer into the public schools. Constitutional amendments to this end were periodically but unsuccessfully introduced in Congress. The constitutional doctrine of Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington v. Schempp (1963) remained in force. Wallace was the first serious test of its continuing vitality.

The Alabama statute at issue in Wallace, as initially enacted in 1978, authorized schools to provide a minute of silence for “meditation.” A 1981 amendment provided a similar period for “meditation or voluntary prayer,” and in 1982 the law was changed to allow teachers to lead “willing students” in a specified prayer to “Almighty God.” Upon challenge by Ishmael Jaffree and various separationist groups, a federal district court held that Engel and Schempp were wrong; states did have the authority to establish religion. A court of appeals reversed, and the Supreme Court granted *certiorari to decide the constitutionality of only the 1981 amendment: Can a state provide a moment of silence at the beginning of a school day for the express purpose of facilitating “meditation or prayer?”

There were reasons to believe that the Court would be amenable to opening a crack in the “wall of separation” on this question. The public's support for school prayer was translated by various state legislatures into statutes aiding religious schools and practices. The election of Ronald Reagan as president and the legal mobilization of accommodationist forces—seven groups, including the Moral Majority, the Christian Legal Society, and the Legal Foundation of America, filed amicus curiae briefs in Wallace—also augured ill for separationist precedents. The Administration was dedicated to an interpretation of the Establishment Clause that would lower or abandon the “wall.” It filed numerous amicus briefs before the Court and split oral argument with states sympathetic to its view (as in Wallace) to advance this argument.

There were also signs from the Court that it was ready to reject its earlier approach. Even before Reagan's election, it adopted an accommodationist posture in affirming, for the first time, direct payment of public funds to religious schools (Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Regan, 1980). In subsequent cases, it upheld tax credits and deductions to parents of all schoolchildren (Mueller v. Allen, 1983), state‐paid legislative chaplains (Marsh v. Chambers, 1983), and a publicly sponsored nativity crèche (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984). The time seemed ripe for a reconsideration of Engel/Schempp. However, it proved not to be.

Justice John Paul Stevens's majority opinion striking down the law was short, to the point, and girded by separationist precedents. Applying the Schempp test as it had been reworked in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), he found the practices sanctioned by the statute to lack a “secular purpose”—one not grounded in a desire to “advance” religion. Although the meditation and prayer statute failed constitutional scrutiny, the Court left open the possibility that one confined to an undefined moment of silence might pass muster; Lewis Powell's concurrence emphasized that point. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor concurred separately to reiterate her “endorsement” standard, first articulated in her Lynch concurrence, and to note that a neutral moment of silence law would not be controlled by the doctrine of Engel and Schempp.

The dissents of Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Byron White held that the Alabama act was an example of “benevolent neutrality” and was thus constitutional under the Court's accommodationist precedents (p. 89). Justice William Rehnquist's dissent was more pointed. He contended that any decision based on Everson v. Board of Education (1947) was wrong; the Constitution does not impose a “wall of separation” between church and state. After an extended analysis of the intent of the framers of the First Amendment, he concluded that the Establishment Clause merely forbids state establishment of a national church or preference of one sect over others and most certainly does not require a state to be neutral between religion and “irreligion.”

See also Religion.

Joseph F. Kobylka