Harris v. City of Zion
| Citation | 729 F. Supp. 1242 |
| Decision Date | 09 February 1990 |
| Docket Number | No. 87 C 7204,87 C 7205.,87 C 7204 |
| Parties | Clint W. HARRIS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF ZION, et al., Defendants. Theodore M. KUHN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF ROLLING MEADOWS, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Richard M. Gutman, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.
Roderick A. Palmore, Jane A. Zimmerman, Paul S. Chervin, Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon, Chicago, Ill., Berle L. Schwartz, Highland Park, Ill., Adeline Jay Geo-Karis, Zion, for City of Zion, et al.
Donald Rose, Cathleen Ross, Rose & Ross, Ltd., Rolling Meadows, Ill., for City of Rolling Meadows, et al.
The plaintiffs in Kuhn v. City of Rolling Meadows and the plaintiffs in Harris v. City of Zion bring actions under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The plaintiffs in Kuhn have moved for summary judgment pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. The plaintiffs and the defendants in Harris have both moved for summary judgment under Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. A summary judgment motion under Rule 56 imposes on the movant the burden of establishing the lack of a genuine issue of material fact. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-23, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2552, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). Because there are no material factual issues in dispute in either case, summary judgment is appropriate for the resolution of this litigation.
The two cases before the Court present the same legal issue: the constitutionality of a religious symbol in a municipality's corporate seal. Our judgment is this: In Kuhn v. City of Rolling Meadows we deny the plaintiffs' motion. We hold that the official seal of the City of Rolling Meadows does not violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, because the defendant in Kuhn has not moved for summary judgment, we take no further step than to deny the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment. In Harris v. City of Zion we deny the defendants' motion and grant the plaintiffs' motion. We hold that the seal, emblem, and logo of the City of Zion violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and therefore enjoin the City of Zion from their continued use.
The plaintiffs are Theodore M. Kuhn, a resident of the City of Rolling Meadows, and the Society of Separationists, Inc., a Maryland corporation. The defendants are the City of Rolling Meadows, Cook County, Illinois ("Rolling Meadows"), the Mayor of Rolling Meadows, and the City Council of Rolling Meadows. The plaintiffs sue the individual members of the City Council, which includes the Mayor, in their official capacities.
Rolling Meadows' corporate seal (Exhibit A) appears below:
This seal appears on all city-owned vehicles, including all police cars and some fire trucks, on the city vehicle stickers of all vehicles operated by city residents, on the shoulder patch of the city police officers, on the city letterhead, and in the City Council chambers.
Rolling Meadows adopted the seal in 1960, the year Rolling Meadows celebrated its fifth anniversary. An eighth grader, Cheryl Knudsen, designed the seal in response to a school art assignment. In an affidavit, Knudsen described the inspiration for her design: "I drew what I saw, and had no purpose other than to complete an assignment." An independent committee selected, and the City Council approved the adoption of, Knudsen's design.
The plaintiffs are Clint W. Harris, a resident of the City of Zion, and the Society of Separationists, Inc. The defendants are the City of Zion, Lake County, Illinois ("Zion"), the Mayor of Zion, and the Zion City Council. The plaintiffs sue the individual members of the City Council, which includes the Mayor, in their official capacities.
Zion's corporate seal (Exhibit B), which contains the Zion emblem, and Zion's logo (Exhibit C) appear below:
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED
The emblem is found in the seal and is surrounded by the phrases "CORPORATE SEAL" and "CITY OF ZION, ILLINOIS."
The seal or logo appears on the city flag, on the city letterhead, in the City Council chambers, on the city vehicle stickers of all vehicles operated by city residents, on the shoulder patch of the city police officers and fire fighters, on the city's water tower located near Ninth Street in Zion, on all city street signs, and on all city-owned vehicles.
At the first meeting of the Zion City Council on May 6, 1902, the Reverend John Alexander Dowie, "the Overseer of the Christian Catholic Church in Zion," presented the City Council with a proposed City of Zion corporate seal. The Christian Catholic Church of Zion was and is an Evangelical Protestant church founded by Dowie. The City of Zion was also founded by Dowie "for the purpose of the extension of the Kingdom of God upon earth ... where God shall rule in every department of family, industry, commercial, educational, ecclesiastical and political life." The City Council's Minutes are clear, in the words of Dowie, on the purpose of the seal:
City of Zion, Minutes of First Meeting of City Council, May 6, 1902. Dowie later makes clear the meaning of each symbol in the emblem:
Id. The City Council, all of whose members belonged to the Christian Catholic Church in Zion and the Theocratic Party, unanimously adopted the ordinance establishing the proposed seal as the official corporate seal of the City of Zion. In 1978 the city developed the logo, modelled on the city's seal, to affix to the Zion water tower.
As we enter this Establishment Clause thicket, see Doe v. Small, 726 F.Supp. 713 (N.D.Ill.1989) (Shadur, J.), we look first to the Supreme Court's most recent guidance in County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, ___ U.S. ___, 109 S.Ct. 3086, 106 L.Ed.2d 472 (1989). As Judge Shadur notes, County of Allegheny reconfirmed the three part test in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971), on which we rely to determine if the challenged government conduct is permissible. For a court to find a statute or government practice constitutional:
First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion, ...; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."
Id. 91 S.Ct. at 2111. The statute or practice must pass each of these three "tests" to be found constitutional.
The plaintiffs' concede that the Rolling Meadows seal does not violate the "purpose" and "entanglement" prongs of the Lemon test. We bear in mind that if any one of the three prongs is violated the seal is unconstitutional. It therefore behooves the defendant to agree that the seal does not violate the "purpose" and "entanglement" prongs. Yet, the defendant oddly insists we examine these "two crucial criteria."
We agree with the plaintiff that the seal does not violate the "purpose" and "entanglement" tests. Although the seal does not have a preamble revealing the purpose for its adoption, the defendant submitted affidavits indicating the city adopted the seal for the purpose of celebrating the community's fifth anniversary. The designer of the seal was an eighth grader who swears, "I drew what I saw, and had no purpose other than to complete an assignment." An independent committee chose the seal as the winning entry. We conclude that the legislative purpose in adopting the seal was secular.
Nothing in the record suggests, and neither party argues, that the seal involves excessive entanglement with government.
The core issue is whether the seal's principal or primary effect is one that advances religion. Lemon, 91 S.Ct. at 2111. As the Supreme Court has noted, whether the verb we choose is "advance," "endorse," "favor," "prefer," or "promote," the principle is the same: "The Establishment Clause, at the very least, prohibits government from appearing to take a position on questions of religious belief or from `making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.'" County of Allegheny, 109 S.Ct. at 3101 (quoting Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 1366, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1984) (O'Connor, J., concurring)).
The primary effect of the seal turns largely on the overall, "unique physical" context, American Jewish Congress v. City of Chicago, 827 F.2d 120, 128 (7th Cir.1987), in which the challenged religious symbol here, the cross2, appears. The Supreme Court has stated that "the government's use of religious symbolism is unconstitutional if it has the effect of endorsing religious beliefs, and the effect of the government's use of religious symbolism depends upon its context." County of Allegheny, 109 S.Ct. at 3103. Based upon the context in which the cross appears in the Rolling Meadows seal, we find that the primary...
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Harris v. City of Zion, Lake County, Ill.
...religious imagery simply has no place on municipal seals. In Kuhn v. City of Rolling Meadows and Harris v. City of Zion, both at 729 F.Supp. 1242 (N.D.Ill.1990), the Society of Separationists ("Society") and two of its members, Theodore M. Kuhn and Clint W. Harris, filed suit against the ci......
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...The court cannot impute complete knowledge of the artist's theme to the average observer of the painting. See Harris v. City of Zion, 729 F.Supp. 1242, 1250 (N.D. Ill.1990) (refusing to impute knowledge of the city's history to the average observer in declaring unconstitutional the city's s......
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...Lynch by the fact that the religious symbols in the county seal did not appear in a generally secular context. In Harris v. City of Zion, 729 F.Supp. 1242 (N.D.Ill.1990), the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois upheld the city of Rolling Meadows' city seal, which contained a......