Wiest v. Mt. Lebanon School District

320 A.2d 362, 457 Pa. 166, 1974 Pa. LEXIS 827

• Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
• Decided: May 22, 1974
• Docket: Appeal, 158
• Status: Published

Opinions

Opinion by

Mr. Chief Justice Jones,

On April 26, 1973, a complaint in equity was filed by fifty-four plaintiffs seeking to enjoin the Mt. Lebanon School District from including an invocation and benediction at the graduation ceremonies of Mt. Lebanon High. School scheduled for June 12, 1973.¹ Ten days earlier at a regular public meeting of the Board of Directors of the School District a commencement program which provided for an audible invocation and benediction had unanimously been adopted. The case was submitted as a case stated to a specially convened three-judge court sitting en banc. Briefs were filed and oral argument was held, and on May 18, 1973, an adjudication was made dismissing the complaint. This direct appeal followed, and we now affirm.

The stipulation of facts, in addition to the adoption of a commencement program by the School Board, shows the following: The Mt. Lebanon School District is established pursuant to the Public School Code of 1949, P. L. 30, 24 P.S. §1-102 et seq., and provides public education within Mt. Lebanon Township. The commencement exercise is a sixty-year old tradition which is held after all courses of study by the graduating seniors are completed. Attendance at the commencement exercise is voluntary, but usually more than ninety percent of the graduating class attends. Those who do not attend may obtain their diplomas at the high school principal’s office any time after the day of commencement.

Appellants premise their claim for relief on the free exercise clause of the first amendment to the United States Constitution, the establishment clause of the first amendment,² and article I, section 3, of the Pennsylvania Constitution. We find that the court below properly applied these constitutional provisions to the facts of this case and did not err in dismissing appellants’ complaint.

I.

The free exercise clause recognizes the value of religious training, teaching and observance, and in particular, “the right of every person to freely choose his own course with reference thereto, free of any compulsion from the state.” This clause acts to withdraw from legislative power, “the exertion of any restraint on the free exercise of religion. Its purpose is to secure religious liberty in the individual by prohibiting any invasions thereof by civil authority. Hence it is necessary in a free exercise case for one to show the coercive effect of the enactment as it operates against him in the practice of his religion.” Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 222-23 (1963).

In a case stated we are confined to the facts presented to the court by the parties, and we cannot go outside of the case stated for its facts, nor assume them by way of inference. Commonwealth v. Howard, 149 , 24 A. 308 (1892); Kelly v. Urban, 136 Pa. Superior Ct. 20, 7 A. 2d 12 (1939). Those facts show that attendance at the graduation ceremonies was purely voluntary. There was no allegation or showing that the inclusion of an invocation and benediction in the commencement program would have any coercive effect upon appellants in the practice of their religion.³ Accordingly, the court below properly dismissed the free exercise claim.

II.

Although the fact that the observance of a religious exercise is voluntary may serve to free that exercise from the limitations of the free exercise clause, the same is not true with regard to the establishment clause. This point was aptly stated by the United States Supreme Court in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 430 (1962): “Although these two clauses may in certain instances overlap, they forbid two quite different kinds of governmental encroachment upon religious freedom. The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not.” In determining whether governmental activity, including school board resolutions, runs afoul of the establishment clause, the pertinent inquiry is into the purpose and primary effect of the resolution. If either the purpose or primary effect is the advancement or prohibition of religion, then the resolution or enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the first amendment. In other words, in order to withstand the strictures of the establishment clause there must be a secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961); Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

While it would be possible to excise various portions of opinions of the United States Supreme Court to support the position advocated by appellants, divorcing the language from the facts of a case serves but to distort its holding. The United States Supreme Court has never been faced with a case in the factual posture of that now before this Court.⁴ However, in dictum, that Court has indicated that every technical infringement upon the first amendment need not be enjoined. Otherwise, in the words of Mr. Justice Douglas: “Prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals to the Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day a holiday; ‘so help me Cod’ in our courtroom oaths— these and all other references to the Almighty that run through our laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies would be flouting the First Amendment. A fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which the Court opens each session: ‘God save the United States and this Honorable Court.’ ” Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 312-13 (1952). In a similar vein, in his concurring opinion in Chamberlain v. Board of Public Instruction, 377 U.S. (1964), Mr. Justice Douglas agreed that a challenge to the constitutionality of baccalaureate services in public schools was properly dismissed since it did not present a substantial federal question.

The court below found that the commencement exercises at Mt. Lebanon High School were just such a public ritual or ceremony which Mr. Justice Douglas may have had in mind.⁵ We agree that the practice here is a permissible accommodation between church and state. Moreover, the burden of proof in a challenge to the constitutionality of the acts of a school board is upon the challengers. The facts as presented to the court below are, in any event, insufficient to support a finding that either the purpose or primary effect of the resolution providing for an invocation and benediction at the commencement exercises was to advance religion.

Not only does the present case withstand the application of formulas developed as guidelines in this type of case, but we are also convinced that the more fruitful inquiry suggested by Mr. Justice Brennan is satisfied here, i.e., “whether the practices here challenged threaten those consequences which the Framers deeply feared; whether, in short, they tend to promote that type of interdependence between religion and state which the First Amendment was designed to prevent.” Abington School District v. Schempp, supra, at 236 (concurring opinion). Accordingly, we concur in the lower court’s dismissal of the complaint on a finding of no violation of the establishment clause.

III.

Appellants’ final claimed basis for relief is that the invocation and benediction at the high school commencement are in derogation of article I, section 3, of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1874, which reads as follows: “All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship.” The principles enunciated in this part of our Constitution reflected a concern for the protection of the religious freedoms of Pennsylvanians long before the first amendment to the United States Constitution was made applicable to the states through the fourteenth amendment. Provisions identical to the above section were contained in the Constitutions of 1790 and 1838 and a similar provision was contained in the Constitution of 1776. On the authority of this provision, this Court has prohibited the use of a public schoolroom for Catholic religious instruction after hours, Hysong v. Gallitzin Borough School District, 164 Pa. 629, 30 A. 482 (1894), and the use of public school property for sectarian religious purposes when school was not in session, Bender v. Streabich, 182 Pa. 251, 37 A. 853 (1897). The protection of rights and freedoms secured by this section of our Constitution, however, does not transcend the protection of the first amendment of the United States Constitution. Our prior discussion is, therefore, equally apposite to this issue. Furthermore, we do not feel that an invocation and benediction are the type of activity at which this section of our Constitution was aimed. This claim, therefore, was also properly dismissed by the court below.

Decree affirmed. Costs on appellants.

1 Appellants here include two parents of members of the 1973 graduating class of the high school, a member of the 1973 graduating class through his mother and natural guardian, and the mother of a member of the class of 1974. Although appellants’ standing was not questioned below, we note that since the basis of the claim is that the program for the 1973 commencement allegedly violates rights guaranteed under the first amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 3, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, the only persons having standing to complain are members of that graduating class, either individually or as represented by a next friend. The rights of these plaintiffs are now technically moot since they have already been graduated. We will not dismiss the appeal on that basis, however, since we recognize that the short time between the announcement of the commencement program and commencement exercises would otherwise effectively deny appellate review of this type of litigation. See, e.g., Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

2 The fourteenth amendment incorporates the protection of the free exercise clause and the establishment clause to render the legislatures of states as incompetent as Congress to make laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940). This protection extends not only against the state itself but also “all its creatures — Boards of Education not excepted.” Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

3 See the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice DouenAS in Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 228-29: “In these cases we have no coercive religious exercise aimed at making the students conform. The prayers announced are not compulsory, though some may think they have that indirect effect because the non-conformist student may be induced to participate for fear of being called an ‘oddball.’ But that coercion, if it be present, has not been shown____”

4 This is not a case dealing with the recital of a prayer or a portion of the Bible, but one where the content of that which is sought to be enjoined was not and could not have been known when the action was brought.

5 Likewise, in a similar case brought against appellee school district in federal district court one year prior to the instant case, the Court noted that “graduation ceremonies at Mt. Lebanon Township School District are just that — i.e., they are ceremonial and in fact not a part of the formal, day-to-day routine of the school curriculum to which is attached compulsory attendance.” Wood v. Mt. Lebanon Township School District, 342 F. Supp. 1293, 1294 (W.D. Pa. 1972).