Additional hearings or new evidence might have put a different cast on the issues, but as the record has not been augmented since the motion for a preliminary injunction, we feel constrained to enter a final judgment in accordance with the Third Circuit's order of June 25, 1993. We make it clear that the opinion of the Court remains that expressed in the oral opinion of June 24, 1993. However, due regard for our “hierarchical federal judicial system,” particularly where the reviewing panel has had the same record as the Court, requires us to respect the findings of the Third Circuit.
Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom of mind, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.
The First Amendment protects speech and religion by quite different mechanisms. Speech is protected by insuring its full expression.... The method for protecting freedom of worship and freedom of conscience in religious matters is quite the reverse.... The Free Exercise Clause embraces a freedom of conscience and worship that has close parallels in the speech provisions of the First Amendment, but the Establishment Clause is a specific prohibition on forms of state intervention in religious affairs with no precise counterpart in the speech provisions.
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's ... fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
These dominant facts mark and control the confines of our decision: [1] State officials direct the performance of a formal religious exercise at promotional and graduation ceremonies for secondary schools. [2] Even for those students who object to the religious exercise, their attendance and participation in the state sponsored religious activity are in a fair and real sense obligatory, though the school district does not require attendance as a condition for receipt of the diploma.
[T]o say a teenage student has a real choice not to attend her high school graduation is formalistic in the extreme.... Everyone knows that in our society and in our culture high school graduation is one of life's most significant occasions. A school rule which excuses attendance is beside the point.
The sole question presented is whether a religious exercise may be conducted at a graduation ceremony in circumstances where ... young graduates who object are induced to conform. No holding by th[e Supreme Court] suggests a school can persuade or compel a student to participate in a religious exercise. That is being done here, and it is forbidden by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Lynch teaches that government may celebrate Christmas in some manner and form, but not in a way that endorses Christian doctrine. Here, Allegheny County has transgressed this line. It has chosen to celebrate Christmas in a way that has the effect of endorsing a patently Christian message: Glory to God for the birth of Jesus Christ. Under Lynch, and the rest of our cases, nothing more is required to demonstrate a violation of the Establishment Clause.
[T]he relevant question for Establishment Clause purposes is whether the combined display of the tree, the sign, and the menorah has the effect of endorsing both Christian and Jewish faiths, or rather simply recognizes that both Christmas and Chanukah are part of the same winter-holiday season, which has attained a secular status in our society. Of the two interpretations of this particular display, the latter seems far more plausible....
Religious students cannot complain that omitting prayers from their graduation ceremony would, in any realistic sense, ‘burden’ their spiritual callings. To be sure, many of them invest this rite of passage with spiritual significance, but they may express their religious feelings about it before and after the ceremony. They may even organize a privately sponsored baccalaureate if they desire the company of like-minded students. Because they accordingly have no need for the machinery of the State to affirm their beliefs, the government's sponsorship of prayer at the graduation ceremony is most reasonably understood as an official endorsement of religion....
These dominant facts mark and control the confines of our decision: State officials direct the performance of a formal religious exercise at promotional and graduation ceremonies for secondary schools. Even for those students who object to the religious exercise, their attendance and participation in the state-sponsored religious activity are in a fair and real sense obligatory, though the school district does not require attendance as a condition for receipt of the diploma.
The Establishment Clause does not license government to treat religion and those who teach or practice it, simply by virtue of their status as such, as subversive of American ideals and therefore subject to unique disabilities.
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