BVR & ASSOCIATES
  • HOME
  • OUR SERVICES
  • About
  • Articles
  • LAW
  • CPA REVIEW

a collections of case digests and laws that can help aspiring law students to become a lawyer


Abington Schools District v. Schempp, 374 US 203 (1973)

10/29/2020

0 Comments

 
 
FACTS:
Edward Lewis Schempp, his wife, and two of their children, who attended public schools in Pennsylvania, filed suit in U.S. district court in Philadelphia, alleging that their religious rights under the First Amendment had been violated by a state law that required public schools to begin each school day with a reading of at least 10 passages from the Bible. The Schempps, who were Unitarians, claimed that the law was an unconstitutional establishment of religion and that it interfered with the free exercise of their religious faith, in violation of the First Amendment’s free-exercise clause. They asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional and to issue an injunction against its enforcement and to strike down the school district’s additional requirement that students recite the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day.
 
After the district court found in favor of the Schempps, the school district and the state’s superintendent of schools appealed to the Supreme Court. Before the case was heard, however, the Pennsylvania General Assembly amended the law to permit students to be excused from Bible readings upon the written request of a parent. The Supreme Court then vacated and remanded the district court’s judgment for further consideration in light of the amended law. After the district court held that the law remained in violation of the establishment clause, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a new appeal, consolidating it with a similar case that had arisen in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray v. Curlett, in which the lower court had found that Bible reading in public schools is constitutional. 
 
ISSUE/S:
Whether the mandatory reading of bible is constitutional
 
RULING:
​
Legislation mandating the reading of religious scripture as part of a public school curriculum violates the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment makes the First Amendment applicable to the states. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from manufacturing its own religion, and it also forbids the government from passing any law that affords a preference to one religion over any other. In order to avoid violating the Establishment Clause, legislation must serve a secular governmental purpose and the primary effect of the legislation must not be to advance or inhibit religion. The Free Exercise Clause prohibits the government from imposing any restrictions upon the individual freedom to engage in religious practices. Legislation violates the Free Exercise Clause if it imposes coercive limitations upon the practice of religion. By contrast, coercion is not a necessary element for legislation to violate the Establishment Clause. The legislation before us does not necessarily require students to participate in religious practices, but it does require students to endure the exercise of religion as part of the regular public school curriculum. The readings take place in public facilities under the oversight of public employees. The readings are religious in nature and the laws in both cases make these religious exercises mandatory. The argument that these exercises seek to advance the secular goals of promoting moral values and the teaching of literature is belied by admissions of the religious character of the exercises. The states argue that forbidding religious exercises in schools works the result of imposing a state-sponsored religion of secularism. Although we agree that the government may not impose laws hostile to the exercise of religion, we do not agree that invalidating these laws amounts to a state-sanctioned preference for those who do not endorse religion over those who embrace a particular ideology. Study of religious scriptures may be presented as a secular aspect of an academic curriculum, but the laws at issue here impose a mandatory exercise of religion. The doctrine of state neutrality does not infringe upon the free exercise of religion by its prohibition against laws that mandate its public exercise, irrespective of the fact that the majority may support its public exercise.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    March 2018

    Categories

    All
    Agrarian Law
    Articles-of-incorporation
    By-laws
    Constitutional Law
    Criminal Law
    Law
    Persons And Family Relations

    RSS Feed

Copyright Notice
Copyright © – 2020, All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer
This  project primarily designed to assist students of law  and accounting in their studies. It is merely a tool. The use of our Services does not guarantee success in obtaining a law/accounting degree nor in passing the Bar/Board Exams. We makes no warranties or representations of any kind, whether expressed or implied for the Services provided.
The cases, laws, and other publications found in this site are of public domain, collected from public sources such as the Supreme Court online library. The content however have been heavily modified, formatted, and optimized for better user experience, and are no longer perfect copies of their original. We gives no warranty for the accuracy or the completeness of the materials. We also reserves the right to further improve, add, modify, or remove content with or without prior announcements.
This site also contains materials published by the students, professors, lawyers, and other users of the our Services. These materials are owned by such users and of their sole responsibility. While we may review user-published content, please do not assume that content you are accessing has been reviewed or curated. You may report abusive content through the listed contact details.
We does not guarantee against any loss or damage caused by third persons, delays, interruptions, unavailability, or by the termination of its Services.
We reserves the right to amend the terms and policies for its Services.

Terms of Service
By using our Services, you are agreeing to these terms. Please read them carefully.
Access our Services only through the interface and instructions provided. Do not misuse the Services, or use them in such ways that may interfere their availability, or in ways that may cause discredit to you, your school, or your profession.
These terms do not give you ownership of any intellectual property rights to the content you access on our Services. Do not use content from our Services other than for personal purposes unless you obtain permission from its owner or are otherwise permitted by law. Do not remove, obscure, or alter any legal notices and attributions displayed in or along with our Services.
We may send you service announcements, administrative messages, and other information. You may opt out of some of those communications.
Our Services are designed to be accessible on mobile devices. Do not use such Services in a way that distracts you and prevents you from obeying traffic or safety laws.
We may suspend or stop providing our Services to you if you do not comply with these terms and policies or if we are investigating suspected misconduct.

Privacy
Some services require you to login or register with minimal personal information this site.
Collected Information
Collected information includes user name, email address, Facebook ID and photo. The user may also optionally provide school, year level, BAR year, profession, office, address, and other information which may assist in improving our Services.
Uses of the Information
The collected information will only be used in connection with the use or for the improvement of our Services.
Users Created Content
Content created by users are published and shared for public use. Published content is always attributed to the author through his user account. A user may remain anonymous by changing his "display name" under his profile.
Data Analytics
We conducts data analytics for the improvement of the usability and design of our Services and the user experience. These may include but not limited to tracking time spent on the site, services availed, number of contents created or shared.

Content
Our Services allow you to create casebooks, digests, outlines, notes, and other content. You retain ownership of intellectual property rights that you hold in that content.
When you create content through our Services, you give us (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example: your list of cases, digests, and outlines in your casebooks).
Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
We reserves the right to review your published content and may remove materials that are offensive, abusive, of no value, or not in line with the purpose of our Services. The amount of content or materials that you publish may be limited by us.
We also used cookies in our website.

Contact Us
  • HOME
  • OUR SERVICES
  • About
  • Articles
  • LAW
  • CPA REVIEW