{"id":3505,"date":"2009-01-27T12:11:54","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T17:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3505"},"modified":"2009-01-27T12:11:54","modified_gmt":"2009-01-27T17:11:54","slug":"the-holiday-formerly-known-as-good-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/01\/the-holiday-formerly-known-as-good-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"The Holiday Formerly Known as Good Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter of complaint <\/a>regarding the\u00a0 recognition of Good Friday as a campus holiday by fifteen of the state’s sixteen technical colleges, apparently pursuant to collective bargaining agreements with instructional staff. The FFRF argues that closing on Good Friday (not just calling the off day “Good Friday’) is inconsistent with a 1996 decision <\/a>of the Western District of Wisconsin invalidating a state law that mandated the closing of public facilities for the purpose of worship.<\/p>\n

The prior decision seems distinguishable to me given the statute’s explicit reference to closing for a religious purpose. It’s hard, in light of that, not to see the statute as violating current Establishment Clause doctrines.<\/p>\n

These cases tend to turn on some ascription (often fictional) of a religious or secular purpose to the state.\u00a0 FFRF will have to show that\u00a0the recognition of the\u00a0Good Friday holiday has a religious purpose or amounts to an endorsement of Christianity. It may well\u00a0lose because a court will conjure some secular justification for recognition of\u00a0the holiday, e.g, that\u00a0the day also known as Good Friday has become a\u00a0traditional opening to the spring vacation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My own view is that there is no sense to this. Spinning some secular justification for what is a religious holiday is unseemly, at best, and disrespectful of the religious tradition in question, at worst. The colleges are recognizing that this is a day with religious significance for most of its employees and is responding to their desire to have that day off.<\/p>\n

My own view is that this ought not to raise Establishment Clause concerns. While it\u00a0may raise\u00a0an issue regarding\u00a0accommodation of\u00a0the religious holidays of other faith traditions, it does not advance or endorse religion in a way that ought to be constitutionally proscribed. A non-Christian\u00a0suffers some\u00a0burden because\u00a0a\u00a0state facility is closed on a day when\u00a0the majority is observing a religious holiday, e.g.,\u00a0 annoyance at the unavailability of certain services or confirmation of one’s minority status.<\/p>\n

But this seems to me to be indistinguishable from the harm that religious adherents claim when the state, for secular reasons, acts in a way that is inconsistent with their beliefs and practices.\u00a0It\u00a0cannot be prevented in an even handed manner and we ought not to try<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Prawfsblawg<\/a> and Shark and Shepherd<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter of complaint regarding the\u00a0 recognition of Good Friday as a campus holiday by fifteen of the state’s sixteen technical colleges, apparently pursuant to collective bargaining agreements with instructional staff. The FFRF argues that closing on Good Friday (not just calling the off day “Good Friday’) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-law","category-western-district-of-wisconsin","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}