Does the Closing of Schools on Religious Holidays Violate Religious Equality?

Do public schools violate the Establishment Clause when they recognize some religious holidays, but not others? Most public schools close for some days of importance to Christians, but not others. It is bad enough that government decides which days are important enough in Christianity to close. Government schools close for those days, but not for days of importance to Jews. If they close for days of importance to Christians and Jews, they do not close for days important to Muslims.

Recently, the Cambridge schools closed for a day of importance to Muslims. This sparked Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly to fume: "Are we going to give Hindus a holiday, are we going to do the Wiccan thing?" Indeed, should we? If the Establishment Clause stands for religious equality, should we not treat all religions equally? In a column raising this issue, Stephen Prothero observes that there are too many religious to make this practical. An alternative would be to close according to the number of students involved without regard to the nature of the religion. So, for example, in Dearborn, Michigan because of the large numbers of Muslims, schools have been closed on days of importance to Muslims for more than ten years. (What do you think of that Bill O’Reilly?). Prothero thinks that the large numbers approach discriminates against minority religions and maintains that the Religion Clauses have a major purpose of protecting minority religions.

So he thinks the choice is between all religious holidays or none. Since all is not possible, he thinks the Establishment Clause requires no religious holidays. No doubt, school districts will come under increasing pressure as religious demographics move in a more pluralistic direction. But schools will not be required to open on Good Friday in my lifetime or the lifetime of my children. The Establishment Clause requires religious equality and respect for minorities except when it does not. I would love to see a case in which a judge is asked to declare that the closing of a school on Good Friday violates the Constitution. Hopefully, the judge would not say that Good Friday no longer has religious meaning. Hopefully, the judge would not say that the Constitution presupposes Christianity. Better, I think would be a discussion focusing on history, path dependence, and an evolving movement toward religious equality with some inequalities remaining in the system. The truth is it would be a difficult opinion to write because it is hard to admit that the Establishment Clause makes accommodations with the Christian hegemony of the past.

Comments

[Jimbino]

This is just one of the many problems in our public schools that would be resolved if we simply eliminated public education and handed out vouchers as uncle Milton recommended.

If that were done, GONE would be political controversy over:

Teaching of funky history in Texas.
Prayer meetings around the flagpole.
Banning of tee-shirt slogans.
Teaching of Intelligent Design.
Firing of teachers for mentioning religion.

The greatest effect would be that kids would have a chance to get an education.

The time has come to kill off public "education."

[Steve Shiffrin]

Susan
Thanks for commenting. I agree with the pragmatic approach, so long as
it is admitted that it comes with costs. I think Prothero gives too
much emphasis too this, but, as he says, The problem with this
pragmatic approach is that it uses the coercive power of the state to
legitimize more popular religions while delegitimizing less popular
ones. That is clearly not the intent of the pragmatic approach, but it
would be the effect in many circumstances. If more Hindus lived in Bill
OReillys school district, perhaps he would not be quite as dismissive.

[Susan Stabile]

Re the argument that the large numbers approach discriminates against minority religions, can one justify it on the basis of practicality? If the population of a school district is, e.g., 80% Muslim, there is little value in the school expending the resources to stay open on a Muslim holiday merely for the sake of equality. To say that in order to avoid the unequal treatment the school either has to stay open and ineffectively teach because the bulk of the class is gone or to also close for religious holidays celebrated by no one or almost no one in the district seems a silly result.
I recognize acting this way is easier when the constitutional issues are not at stake, but it is the same rationale: When I was taught at St. John's, where I had a fairly large number of observant Jewish students, I canceled class on Yom Kippur. I don't cancel class on Yom Kippur at St. Thomas, where I now teach and where in the last three years I've had only a handful of Jewish students (and you have to add up all the classes I taught to get a handful).