Koenick v. Felton
| Citation | 190 F.3d 259 |
| Decision Date | 01 December 1998 |
| Docket Number | CA-96-3111-AW,No. 97-1935,97-1935 |
| Parties | (4th Cir. 1999) JUDITH M. KOENICK, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. REGINALD M. FELTON, President, Board of Education of Montgomery County; PAUL VANCE, Superintendent of Schools, Montgomery County Public Schools, Defendants-Appellees. THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS; NATIONAL COUNCIL ON ISLAMIC AFFAIRS; FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION; AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE; AMERICANS FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY; AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION; THE AMERICAN ETHICAL UNION, Amici Curiae. () Argued: |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit) |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Greenbelt. Alexander Williams, Jr., District Judge.
COUNSEL ARGUED: Eugene Roy Fidell, FELDESMAN, TUCKER, LEIFER, FIDELL & BANK, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Stuart Henry Newberger, CROWELL & MORING, L.L.P., Washington, D.C., for Amici Curiae. Roger Warren Titus, VENABLE, BAETJER & HOWARD, L.L.P., Rockville, Maryland, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Dwight H. Sullivan, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF MARYLAND, Baltimore, Maryland; Arthur B. Spitzer, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL AREA, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Bradley S. Albert, CRO-WELL & MORING, L.L.P., Washington, D.C.; Harvey Reiter, Marc D. Stern, AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS, Washington, D.C.; G. Arthur Robbins, MCNAMEE, HOSEA, JERNIGAN & KIM, P.A., Greenbelt, Maryland; Steven K. Green, AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, Washington, D.C., for Amici Curiae. Kevin B. Collins, VENABLE, BAETJER & HOWARD, L.L.P., Rockville, Maryland, for Appellees.
Before ERVIN and MOTZ, Circuit Judges, and BUTZNER, Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Ervin wrote the opinion, in which Judge Motz and Senior Judge Butzner joined.
Judith M. Koenick ("Koenick"), a former public school teacher, filed this § 1983 action against the Board of Education of Montgomery County, Maryland ("the Board") challenging the constitutionality of a Maryland statute which provides for public school holidays on the Friday before Easter through the Monday following. Koenick argued that the holiday statute's enforcement amounted to an impermissible establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.1 Both parties filed summary judgment motions in district court. The court awarded summary judgment in favor of the Board and Koenick appealed. Because we agree with the district court that this statute does not violate the Establishment Clause, we affirm.
Under Maryland law, public schools must create their annual school calendar in accordance with Md. Code Ann., Educ. § 7-103 (1996). Subsection (c) of § 7-103 provides for public school holidays on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve through January 1, the Friday before Easter through the Monday after, Memorial Day, and primary and general election days.2
As authorized, the Board adds additional holidays to those listed in § 7-103(c), including Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, President's Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Yom Kippur, and Rosh Hashanah. The Board decided to include Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah to the list of holidays because high absenteeism among both teachers and students on those days resulted in low instructional productivity and increased costs for substitute teachers. The Board also builds into the calendar an annual spring vacation by adding four more vacation days to the beginning of or at the end of the statutory four-day break over Easter weekend mandated by § 7-103(c)(1)(iii). In creating the annual calendar, the Board attempts to schedule the ten-day spring vacation so that it coincides with Passover to lower absenteeism, but that is not always possible. The official school calendar indicates that from the Friday before Easter to the Monday after Maryland public schools are closed for "Easter."
On October 3, 1996, Koenick filed this action pro se against the President and Superintendent of the Board alleging that the Board's recognition and enforcement of § 7-103(c)(1)(iii), which provides for a school holiday from the Friday before Easter to the Monday after, violated the Establishment Clause. A period of discovery followed during which Koenick retained counsel. At the close of discovery, Koenick moved to file an amended complaint and to add additional State officials as defendants. The district court allowed the filing of an amended complaint but denied her request to add defendants. Additional discovery followed the filing of the amended complaint, after which the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Board, denying Koenick's claims that § 7-103(c)(1)(iii) violated the Establishment Clause. Rejecting Koenick's argument that because § 7103(c)(1)(iii) facially prefers one religion over another, the Maryland statute should be subject to strict scrutiny under Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U.S. 680 (1989), the district court applied the three-part test announced in Lemon v. Kurtzman , 403 U.S. 602 (1971) ("the Lemon test"). Under the Lemon test, the district court found the statute constitutional because it had a secular purpose, its principal or primary effect was not to advance or inhibit religion, and it did not foster an excessive entanglement between church and state. The district court acknowledged that the Supreme Court had recently suggested other tests for analyzing the constitutionality of statutes under the Establishment Clause and also that other Circuit courts had found similar statutes unconstitutional, but declined to apply the reasoning of these courts in this case. Koenick appealed the ruling.
We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo. See Brogan v. Holland, 105 F.3d 158, 161 (4th Cir. 1997). We must affirm if the case presents no genuine issues of material fact and the Board is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. See Roe v. Doe, 28 F.3d 404, 406 (4th Cir. 1994). All reasonable inferences are to be drawn in favor of the non-movant, Koenick. See id. at 407.
Koenick alleges that § 7-103(c)(1)(iii) violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Establishment Clause provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." U.S. Const. amend. I. To evaluate Koenick's claim, therefore, we must venture into the often-dreaded and certainly murky area of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. As an initial matter, however, we must determine whether Koenick has standing to bring this suit.
Just prior to oral argument, Koenick applied for retirement from the Montgomery County Public School system. She requested that her retirement pay commence on December 1, 1998, the exact date of oral argument in this case. This Court was made aware of Koenick's change in employment status in a letter from the Board's counsel wherein the Board argued that this issue mooted Koenick's appeal because she no longer had standing to file her appeal. In a response letter, Koenick's counsel conceded that, without being a teacher, Koenick lacked standing to bring her equal protection claim, but that as a taxpayer and citizen of Montgomery County and the State of Maryland she retained standing to pursue her Establishment Clause claim.
Article III, § 2 of the Constitution requires that judicial resources be spent only in the resolution of Cases or Controversies. Part of this case-or-controversy hurdle requires that the litigants have standing to sue or defend. See Arizonians for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 64 (1997). To prove standing, a party must show "an invasion of a legally protected interest" that is"concrete and particularized." Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992). An interest shared with the public at large is not sufficient; see id. at 57376, the litigant must allege a direct injury, such as being subjected to an unwelcome intrusion of religion. See Suhre v. Haywood County, 131 F.3d 1083, 1086-87 (4th Cir. 1997).
The seminal taxpayer standing case is Doremus v. Board of Educ., 342 U.S. 429 (1952), in which the Supreme Court explained that a taxpayer has standing to challenge a statute when he is able to show that he "has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as a result of [the challenged statute's] enforcement." Id. at 434 (citations omitted). Such a direct injury has been found when the challenged statute involves the expenditure of state tax revenues. See Cammack v. Waihee, 932 F.2d 765, 769 (9th Cir. 1991). This principle has been interpreted to justify finding that a municipal taxpayer has standing in cases where the litigant's only injury is the alleged improper expenditure of municipal funds. See id. at 770 ().3
Applying this standard, Koenick has standing as a taxpayer in Montgomery County. In her complaint, Koenick alleges that she is injured by the expenditures of her tax revenues towards the paid holiday on the Friday before and the Monday after Easter for public school employees. It is undisputed that these tax revenues fund the public school system in the County and thereby fund the paid, statutory holidays for school employees such as that required by § 7103(c)(1)(iii). Because Koenick is a taxpayer who indirectly bears the burden of funding a paid public school holiday around Easter, we find that she has standing to pursue her appeal.
Having found that Koenick has standing to bring this Establishment Clause claim, we turn our attention to the merits of her appeal.
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