The Handy Law Answer Book. David L Hudson
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compromise his or her beliefs. During a moment of silence, a student who objects to prayer is left to his or her own thoughts, and is not compelled to listen to the prayers or thoughts of others. For these simple reasons, a moment of silence statute does not stand or fall under the Establishment Clause according to how the Court regards vocal prayer or Bible reading. Scholars and at least one Member of this Court have recognized the distinction and suggested that a moment of silence in public schools would be constitutional.”
Chief Justice Warren Burger (dissenting): “Some who trouble to read the opinions in these cases will find it ironic—perhaps even bizarre—that on the very day we heard arguments in the cases, the Court’s session opened with an invocation for Divine protection.”
Justice Byron White (dissenting): “Of course, I have been out of step with many of the Court’s decisions dealing with this subject matter, and it is thus not surprising that I would support a basic reconsideration of our precedents.”
Justice William Rehnquist (dissenting): “It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history, but unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson’s misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years.”
Does the First Amendment protect graduation prayer?
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in Lee v. Weisman (1992) that school-sponsored graduation prayer violates the First Amendment. The majority focused on the coercive pressure placed on students at graduation who did not adhere to the same religion as the religious figure giving the graduation prayer. The majority also noted that students at graduation were a captive audience who essentially had no choice as to whether to hear the prayer or not.
What was the Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe case on school prayer and what did the U.S. Supreme Court decide?
The 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision on school prayer was a case involving prayers announced over a loudspeaker at Texas high school football games. In Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, the Court ruled 6 to 3 that the practice violated the Establishment Clause in part because most observers would believe that the school was endorsing religion. Even though the student body voted on whether to have the prayers or not, the Court reasoned that the policy meant that majoritarian religious preferences would also trump those of the minority.
Justice John Paul Stevens (majority): “The actual or perceived endorsement of the message, moreover, is established by factors beyond just the text of the policy. Once the student speaker is selected and the message composed, the invocation is then delivered to a large audience assembled as part of a regularly scheduled, school-sponsored function conducted on school property. The message is broadcast over the school’s public address system, which remains subject to the control of school officials. It is fair to assume that the pregame ceremony is clothed in the traditional indicia of school sporting events, which generally include not just the team, but also cheerleaders and band members dressed in uniforms sporting the school name and mascot.”
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist (dissenting): “The Court distorts existing precedent to conclude that the school district’s student-message program is invalid on its face under the Establishment Clause. But even more disturbing than its holding is the tone of the Court’s opinion; it bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life. Neither the holding nor the tone of the opinion is faithful to the meaning of the Establishment Clause.”
Does the First Amendment protect all forms of free speech?
No, the First Amendment does not protect all forms of speech even though the text of the amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The First Amendment does not protect many forms of speech. Some examples include obscenity, child pornography, incitement to imminent lawless action, perjury, true threats, libel, and solicitation to commit murder.
What is obscentity and pornography, and what is art? Should the First Amendment protect all forms of speech? (iStock)
What is obscenity?
Obscenity refers to hard-core pornography that goes beyond so-called contemporary community standards. Obscenity is judged by the so-called “Miller test” from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision Miller v. California (1973). The Miller test requires that material appeal predominately to the prurient (morbid or shameful) interest in sex, depict sexual material in a patently offensive way and have no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
For example, a federal district in Florida held that a rap music album filled with profanity and misogynistic language constituted obscenity. On appeal, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal reversed and determined that the album As Nasty as They Wanna Be by the 2 Live Crew did not constitute obscenity, because the music (though profane) had some serious artistic value. Attorneys for the defendant produced several expert witnesses who testified as to the material’s serious artistic value.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Miller stated:
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Kois v. Wisconsin, supra, at 230, quoting Roth v. United States, supra, at 489; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. We do not adopt as a constitutional standard the “utterly without redeeming social value” test of Memoirs v. Massachusetts, that concept has never commanded the adherence of more than three Justices at one time…. If a state law that regulates obscene material is thus limited, as written or construed, the First Amendment values applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment are adequately protected by the ultimate power of appellate courts to conduct an independent review of constitutional claims when necessary….
We emphasize that it is not our function to propose regulatory schemes for the States. That must await their concrete legislative efforts. It is possible, however, to give a few plain examples of what a state statute could define for regulation under part (b) of the standard announced in this opinion, supra:
(a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated.
(b) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals.
How does the notion of community standards affect obscenity cases?
The first two prongs of the Miller test—prurient interest and patent offensiveness—are both judged by community standards. The applicable community could be a local or state standard. In a few states, there is a state-wide standard. In some states the community is county-by-county. There is no national standard or international standard in obscenity cases. This becomes a major issue in cases involving alleged obscenity on the Internet. Defendants—especially publishers or distributors of pornographic material—have alleged it is unfair for them to be subject to the community standards of a particularly restrictive locale when they for instance may have produced the material in a more tolerant community.
This occurred in a case United States v. Thomas (6th Cir. 1996) involving a California couple responsible for the creation of an online bulletin board full of sex materials. The California-based couple sold material to an undercover federal law enforcement agent in Memphis. The officer then charged the couple with obscenity and the case was prosecuted under the community standards of Tennessee, not California.
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