RELIGION (US SUPREME COURT)
Wallace v. Jaffree (1985)
After the US Supreme Court had ruled that prayers in schools were unconstitutional, the Alabama legislature tried to get around that ruling by passing a law authorizing teachers to start each school day with a "moment of silent meditation or voluntary prayer." But in the 1985 case of Wallace v. Jaffree, the Court ruled this law was unconstitutional. "Silent meditation" was really about religion, the Court said, and since the law lacked a secular purpose, it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Listen to the oral arguments:
Read the decision:
US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in 1997 that teachers who strip-searched two eight-year-old second grade girls in Talladega cannot be sued because they were acting in good faith. The girls were accused of stealing $7. The money was never found, and it was never clearly established if it had in fact been taken, or misplaced. The girls' lawyers had argued that since 1980, strip searches had been found unconstitutional in every case in which neither weapons nor drugs were involved.
Dissenting judges on the Appeals Court were concerned by the multiple searches to which the two children were subjected: first their backpacks were searched, and then they had to take off their socks and shoes. When nothing was found, they were escorted to the bathroom not once, but twice! and ordered to lower their underwear.
In his dissent, Senior Circuit Judge Kravitch wrote, "The second strip search was even more blatantly unconstitutional, as no one could reasonably argue that it was necessary after the fruitless prior search...Strip searching a student is permissible only in extraordinary cases, and only to prevent imminent harm." The US Supreme Court refused to review the case.
(The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Court has jurisdiction in Florida and Georgia, as well as Alabama).