Bridenbaugh v. O'Bannon

• Decision Date: 21 July 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-3058,98-3058
• Citation: 185 F.3d 796
• Parties: (7th Cir. 1999) Russell Bridenbaugh, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Frank O'Bannon, in his official capacity as Governor of the State of Indiana, Defendant-Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 796

185 F.3d 796 (7th Cir. 1999)

Russell Bridenbaugh, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Frank O'Bannon, in his official capacity as Governor of the State of Indiana, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 98-3058

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued January 11, 1999

Decided July 21, 1999

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. No. 97 C 1132--V. Sue Shields, Magistrate Judge.

Before Fairchild, Manion, and Kanne, Circuit Judges.

Manion, Circuit Judge.

By statute, Indiana state employees have a day off with pay on Good Friday, as they do on at least eleven other legal holidays during the year. Russell Bridenbaugh sued Frank O'Bannon, Indiana's Governor, in his official capacity, contending that providing Good Friday as a legal holiday was a "law respecting an establishment of religion" and so violated the First Amendment. The parties consented to have the case heard by a magistrate judge, who granted the defendant summary judgment. Bridenbaugh appeals. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

Indiana ranks as one of the most generous states in terms of the number of legal holidays it gives to its employees--fourteen in election years and twelve in non-election years. On legal holidays in Indiana, state employees have the day off with pay, and most Indiana state offices are closed. Those which remain open such as prisons, police stations and hospitals, use minimal staffing. Legal holidays recognized in Indiana are: New Year's Day; Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, commemorated on the third Monday in January; Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12; George Washington's birthday, which is observed on the third Monday in February; Good Friday, which is the Friday preceding Easter Sunday; Memorial Day; Independence Day; Labor Day; Columbus Day, observed on the second Monday in October; Primary Election Day; Election Day; Thanksgiving Day; and Christmas Day. Ind. Code 1-1-9-1. The statute which establishes these legal holidays also authorizes the Governor to shift the date on which the holiday is observed, although the Governor cannot move the day of observance for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. Ind. Code 1- 1-9-2. Thus, even though both Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday fall in February, in order to give employees a longer consecutive holiday, the Governor generally moves these holidays to the day after Thanksgiving and to either the day before or after Christmas. Because Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays are not observed in February, absent the Good Friday holiday employees would be without a holiday for more than four months (between Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday and Memorial Day).

Good Friday has been a legal holiday in Indiana since 1941. On Good Friday, Christians commemorate the death of Jesus Christ, whom they believe to be the Messiah. The date on which Good Friday is observed changes from year to year because it always falls on the Friday before Easter, and Easter falls on different dates in different years.¹ See Ind. Code, 1-1-9-1 (enumerating legal holidays in Indiana, including "Good Friday, a movable feast day").

Russell Bridenbaugh believes that by giving employees a legal holiday on Good Friday, Indiana is violating the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. He sued the Governor of Indiana, Frank O'Bannon, in his official capacity, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. (For simplicity, we will refer to the defendant as "Indiana.") The parties filed cross- motions for summary judgment. The magistrate judge granted Indiana summary judgment, concluding that Section 1-1-9-1 of the Indiana Code does not violate the Establishment Clause because Indiana has presented evidence of a secular justification for the holiday.

ANALYSIS

The First Amendment, which applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . . ." The Supreme Court has frequently wrestled with how to apply the Establishment Clause, most significantly in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). In Lemon, the Court adopted a three-prong test for determining the constitutionality of governmental action. A law does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause if: (1) it has a secular purpose; (2) its principal or primary effect neither advances nor inhibits religion; and (3) it does not foster an excessive entanglement with religion. Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13.

While some have questioned the continued validity of the Lemon test--preferring the so- called endorsement test articulated in Justice O'Connor's concurrence in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 699 (1984), see also Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 763 (1995); County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, 492 U.S. 573, 592 (1989)-- the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed that "the general principles we use to evaluate whether government aid violates the Establishment Clause have not changed. . . ." Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 222-23 (1997). Thus, the Court "continue[s] to ask whether the government acted with the purpose of advancing or inhibiting religion, and the nature of that inquiry has remained largely unchanged. Likewise, [the Court] continue[s] to explore whether the aid has the 'effect' of advancing or inhibiting religion. . . ." Id. at 222-23. And finally, the Court still considers whether the governmental action resulted in an excessive entanglement between church and state. Id. at 232. In applying our Establishment Clause analysis, we must recognize that the Clause is not absolute; it does not prohibit all interaction between government and religion. As the Court stated, "[i]n every Establishment Clause case, we must reconcile the inescapable tension between the objective of preventing unnecessary intrusion of either the church or the state upon the other, and the reality that, as the Court has so often noted, total separation of the two is not possible." Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 672 (1984).

In this case, Bridenbaugh contends that Indiana's Good Friday holiday fails the first and second prongs of the Lemon test; he asserts that the Good Friday holiday lacks a secular justification, and that it has the principal or primary effect of advancing religion. (Bridenbaugh does not claim that the holiday creates an excessive entanglement between church and state.)

The district court rejected these arguments. It concluded that while the Good Friday holiday has "the potential effect of making it easier for religious Christian state employees to practice their religion," Indiana had established a valid secular justification for the Good Friday holiday--to provide a long spring weekend for its employees. Accordingly, the district court upheld the constitutionality of the Good Friday holiday and granted Indiana summary judgment.

In reaching this conclusion, the district court relied heavily on our decision in Metzl v. Leininger, 57 F.3d 618 (7th Cir. 1995). In Metzl, the plaintiff sued Illinois alleging that Illinois violated the Establishment Clause when it made Good Friday a legal holiday in the public school system. Illinois argued that the holiday was justified for secular reasons because it would "save the school system the expense of keeping the schools open on a day when very few teachers and students can be expected to attend." Id. at 621. Metzl recognized that "a law that promotes religion may nevertheless be upheld either because of the secular purposes that the law also serves or because the effect in promoting religion is too attenuated to worry about." Id. at 620. However, Metzl held that where the government asserted a secular justification for a law, it bore the burden of producing evidence to support that justification, and that Illinois had failed its burden because it had not presented evidence of "how many students and teachers, in each of the state's public school districts, would absent themselves from Good Friday if the challenged state law did not require the schools to be closed that day." Id. at 621. While Metzl concluded that Illinois had failed its burden, it also recognized that we would have a different case if "Illinois had made a forthright official announcement that the public schools shall be closed on the Friday before Easter in order to give students and teachers a three-day spring weekend, rather than to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ . . . ." Id. at 623. Although this comment can be labeled dictum in Metzl because Illinois had offered a substantially different justification, providing a spring holiday was the precise purpose in the other two appellate decisions addressing an Establishment Clause challenge to a Good Friday closing. These courts upheld the closing based on that secular purpose. See Cammack v. Waihee, 932 F.2d 765 (9th Cir. 1991) (closing Hawaii public schools); Granzeier v. Middleton, 173 F.3d 568 (6th Cir. 1999) (closing Kentucky county courts). In this case, like Hawaii and Kentucky but unlike Illinois, Indiana also justifies its Good Friday closing as accomplishing the secular purpose of providing a spring holiday.

While there is no legislative history explaining the original reason for the Good Friday holiday-- which would not be dispositive anyway, Metzl, 57 F.3d 621--Indiana has officially stated that it continues to recognize Good Friday as a legal holiday in order to provide a spring holiday to state employees during a time period in which there would be over four months without a holiday (between Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, observed January 20, 1997, and Memorial Day, observed May 26, 1997).² Indiana also presented evidence that it believes that it serves its interests as an employer to give generous holidays---including the Good Friday holiday-- because holidays bolster employees' efficiency and morale. Additionally, Indiana...