Wallace v. Jaffree Totally Explained

Everything about Wallace V Jaffree totally explained

Wallace v. Jaffree,, was a United States Supreme Court case deciding on the issue of silent school prayer.
   An Alabama law authorized teachers to set aside one minute at the start of each day for a moment of "silent meditation or voluntary prayer," and sometimes the teacher of the classroom asked upon a student to recite some prayers. A parent of three students sued the state, claiming that the law violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The plaintiff had complained that the law instituted compulsory prayer and exposed students to religious indoctrination.
   The United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama allowed the practice. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding the law unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the Alabama law violated constitutional principle. Notably, future Chief Justice William Rehnquist issued a dissenting opinion, arguing that the Court's Establishment Clause reasoning in the line of cases beginning with Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) was flawed in as much as it was based on the writings of Thomas Jefferson, who wasn't the author of the Clause.
   From the court opinion:
ť :Section 16-1-20.1 is a law respecting the establishment of religion and thus violates the First Amendment.

ť :"(a)The proposition that the several States have no greater power to restrain the individual freedoms protected by the First Amendment than does Congress is firmly embedded in constitutional jurisprudence. The First Amendment was adopted to curtail Congress' power to interfere with the individual's freedom to believe, to worship, and to express himself in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience......"

ť :"(b)One of the well-established criteria for determining the constitutionality of a statute under the Establishment Clause is that the statute must have a secular legislative purpose. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-613 (1971). The First Amendment requires that a statute must be invalidated if it's entirely motivated by a purpose to advance religion."

ť :"(c)The record here not only establishes that 16-1-20.1's purpose was to endorse religion, it also reveals that the enactment of the statute wasn't motivated by any clearly secular purpose." "...The State's endorsement, by enactment of 16-1-20.1, of prayer activities at the beginning of each schoolday isn't consistent with the established principle that the government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion."

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