Grad prayer ok in 11th Circuit

[Scarberry, Mark]

Interestingly, the majority opinion on en banc review in Adler and the
dissenting opinion both seemingly approve of Doe v. Madison School District,
the vacated 9th Circuit opinion which had upheld the Madison School
District's policy of allowing the top students by grade point average to do
whatever they wanted to do at graduation, including praying. All the 11th
circuit judges who participated in Adler seemed to think that the Madison
policy would pass Establishment Clause muster. The majority said the policy
in Adler was like the Madison policy and thus constitutional; the dissent
said it was unlike the Madison policy and thus unconstititional.

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine University School of Law
mailto:mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: David Cruz [mailto:dcruz at LAW.USC.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2000 10:02 AM
To: RELIGIONLAW at listserv.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Grad prayer ok in 11th Circuit


On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Michael MASINTER wrote:

> The decision can be downloaded from the circuit's web site,
> http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions.htm by clicking on day 15, unzipping
> the file, and opening 98-2709.

98-2709.opn appears to be the panel opinion, and 98-2709.op2 the en banc
opinion.

-David B. Cruz, USC Law (Cal.)