Court rejects challenge to school closings on Good Friday
By Richard Carelli, Associated Press, 01/18/00
WASHINGTON -- A Maryland law that requires the annual closing of all public schools from Good Friday to the Monday after Easter survived a Supreme Court challenge today.
The justices, without comment, rejected an appeal in which retired teacher Judith Koenick said the law violates the constitutionally required separation of church and state.
Thirteen states designate Good Friday as a legal holiday but only three -- Maryland, Illinois and North Dakota -- require all public schools to close on Good Friday. A federal appeals court has struck down the Illinois law.
A challenge to Indiana's Good Friday law is pending before the justices, who have not yet said whether they will fully review that dispute.
The Maryland law "sends the message to non-Christians that the state finds Good Friday, and thus Christianity, to be a religion worth honoring while their religion or nonreligion is not of equal importance," Ms. Koenick's appeal said.
"That message is particularly significant in this case because it is being sent to schoolchildren," she said.
A federal trial judge and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument. "The four-day holiday around Easter is supported by a pragmatic, legitimate secular purpose," the appeals court ruled last August.
That purpose, it said, is to avoid the anticipated high absenteeism among teachers and students on the days surrounding Easter, the holiest of Christian holidays.
While still a teacher, Ms. Koenick sued the Montgomery County, Md., Board of Education in 1996 as a taxpayer. Ms. Koenick, who is Jewish, said the law "sends a message of inclusion to Christian children and a message of exclusion to their Jewish, Muslim and nonbelieving classmates."
Montgomery County schools also are closed on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. But those policy decisions are based on findings that large numbers of students would be absent if schools were open on those days.
Maryland law does not require school closings for any Jewish holiday. A state law designates these public school holidays: Thanksgiving and the day after; Christmas Eve through Jan. 1; the Friday before Easter through the Monday after; Memorial Day; and primary and general election days.
The justices were told that state and federal courts are divided over the legitimacy of laws or governmental practices dealing with Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus.
Lawyers for Ms. Koenick urged the court "to bring order to the lower courts' chaotic decisions concerning governmental recognition of Good Friday."
But the county school board's lawyers urged the court to reject her appeal.
Noting that the four-day Easter break dates back to 1865, they said it "is no different than the four-day Thanksgiving and nine-day Christmas breaks."
The holiday "is anchored around the increasingly secularized holiday of Easter, which is a traditional time for Marylanders, like many other Americans, to begin Easter-related travel," the school board's lawyers said.
The 13 states listed as having Good Friday laws are Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin.
California and Kentucky have laws establishing part of Good Friday as a holiday for government employees, and in Texas the day is an "optional holiday" for state employees.
The case is Koenick vs. Felton, 99-816.
