Metzl v. Leininger (1995)
Government Observance of Religious Holidays: Good Friday as a State Holiday
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Can the government take a religious holiday and make an official state holiday out of it? Is it an establishment of religion when a religious holy day becomes an official state holiday? Good Friday is a Christian Holy Day which many Christians would surely like to have off, but does that mean that governments should grant it official recognition over and above the holy days of other religions?
Background Information
Andrea Metzl, an Illinois public school teacher, filed a lawsuit to prevent the state of Illinois from (among other things) using of public funds derived from taxes that she paid to pay teachers for the Good Friday holiday. Good Friday, one of Christianity's most important holy days, became a public holiday in 1941. In 1989 the Illinois legislature rescinded this law making Good Friday a state holiday, but kept the provision making it a school holiday - meaning that schools would be closed, but teachers and other school employees would be paid as normal.
No holidays of any other religions received such recognition by the state government. However, school children are excused from attending classes on other days if their religions requires it - thus indicating that a mandatory Good Friday holiday as not necessary in order to accommodate the needs of Christian students.
A district judge found in favor of Andrea Metzl and issued a permanent injunction against enforcing Good Friday as a school holiday. The state appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals
Court Decision
In a decision written by Chief Judge Posner and joined by Judge Cummings, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the district court and ruled in favor of Metzl's argument that Good Friday could not be declared a public, state-sponsored holiday without violating the separation of church and state.
According to Posner's decision, the prohibition against the government from establishing a religion also includes using public funds to promote one religion at taxpayer expense over other religions - in other words, to favor the religion of some citizens over the religions of other citizens. That, however, is exactly what occurred here, especially when it is remembered that Good Friday, unlike some other holidays, still retains the full force of its religious implications.
Some holidays that are religious, even sectarian, in origin, such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, have so far lost their religious connotation in the eyes of the general public that government measures to promote them, as by making them holidays or even by having the government itself celebrate them, have only a trivial effect in promoting religion. Even Easter is becoming gradually secularized... Good Friday, however, is not a secular holiday anywhere in the United States... This is not merely our impression. It is the unanimous view of the theologians of diverse faiths who submitted affidavits in the district court.
What is happening, then, is that Illinois was forcing all schools to grant special recognition to Christianity regardless of the actual number of Christian students in any particular school. Although it is legitimate for the government to try and accommodate the beliefs of individuals, Posner found that this establishment of a Good Friday holiday went far and beyond what might be necessary to achieve that goal - especially since accommodation for the religious beliefs of other students was achieved through much narrower means.
The state law closing all public schools on Good Friday makes the burden of religious observance lighter on Christians than on the votaries of other religions. The Christian does not have to absent himself from school on a school day, and so perhaps have to incur the inconvenience of a make-up exam on a later day, as the observant Jew might have to do if his school district decided not to close for any Jewish holidays. Such inconveniences are slight, as we have already noted. But the First Amendment does not allow a state to make it easier for adherents of one faith to practice their religion than for adherents of another faith to practice their religion, unless there is a secular justification for the difference in treatment.
Chief Judge Posner did offer a potential way out for the Illinois state government when he observed that laws which promote religion as part of wider secular purposes are not unconstitutional. That was not a factor in this case because it only dealt with a narrow promotion of Good Friday alone; however, it would be theoretically possible for a new law to be crafted which served some other ostensible purpose while including Good Friday as a school holiday.
One possible purpose offered by Posner was the idea that if so many Christians absented themselves on Good Friday anyway, there would be little point in keeping the schools open. Posner argued that non-Christians would understand that closing the schools would then be not an attempt to promote Christianity but, rather, because it is more wasteful to have classes when hardly anyone is around. That, however, was a question of fact for which there was absolutely no evidence - Illinois would have to make a case for that being true before it could be accepted as a secular purpose for closing schools on Good Friday; moreover, it would not necessarily justify spending taxpayer dollars on paying teachers and employees as if the schools were not closed.
Another possible secular purpose offered by Posner was the idea of creating a Spring Holiday around a long weekend for the purpose of encouraging shopping and recreation. That was an argument made in Hawaii and accepted as the basis for the ruling in Cammack v. Waihee that, at least in that state, Good Friday had become secularize and had acquired a secular purpose, thus allowing the government to make it an official holiday. Good Friday could be picked over any other Friday or any Monday in spring if it could be shown that many students would be absent from school anyway, thus making Good Friday a choice of convenience. Once again, however, the state government was unable to offer any arguments to support such a position.
Judge Manion dissented from the above decision, arguing that it was not the state's job to prove that the establishment of Good Friday as a school holiday was justified; rather, it was Metzl's obligation to prove that it was unjustified. According to Manion, the state did all that was required when offering plausible secular reasons for the holiday but Metzl failed in her task when she was unable to offer persuasive arguments that the state was incorrect.
Good Friday has been a school holiday for half a century yet no one detected religious discrimination for all those years. ...Ms. Metzl has offered nothing that shows any present or original intent to favor Christianity over other religions. Surely Ms. Metzl must show something other than the mere fact that Good Friday is a holiday in order to prevail on her claim that the holiday is intended to favor Christians over Muslims, Jews, and others.
Significance
In rejecting attempts to establish Good Friday as an officially sanctioned holiday, this decision emphasized a basic principle when it comes to cases about the separation of church and state: government actions which favor one religion over other religions are unconstitutional unless the government can point to a sound secular purpose.
In cases where Good Friday is specifically singled out as a public or school holiday, no such secular purpose is likely to be forthcoming. Although there are certainly many areas where it may be convenient to close schools or offices on Good Friday simply because so many people won't be around anyway, that is actually changing as the religious and social makeup of the United States evolves.
One day, perhaps Muslim or Hindu holidays will have to be granted such status while Christians will be forced to take personal days in order to observe their holy days. The question is, would they feel put upon in having to do so? If the answer to that is "yes," then perhaps they shouldn't cause the same to happen to Muslims and Hindus and adherents of other minority faiths today.
Further Information
Good Friday & Easter
Good Friday is a Christian Holy Day which many Christians would surely like to have off
from work or school, but does that mean that governments should grant it official
recognition over and above the holy days of other religions?
Back To: Court Decisions on Religious Liberty (main page)
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