NEW ORLEANS (RNS)—A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law that requires public school students to observe a daily minute of silence following the Pledge of Allegiance.
“The statute is facially neutral between religious and nonreligious activities that students can choose to engage in during the moment of silence,” a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.
The Texas ordinance, which took effect in September 2003, says students can use the minute to “reflect, pray, meditate or engage in any other silent activity that is not likely to interfere with or distract another student.”
The court used a standard three-point legal test to examine the law’s secular purpose, primary effect and whether it caused excessive entanglement with religion before affirming that it was constitutional.
No courts that have examined moment-of-silence statutes have found their primary effect to be to advance or inhibit religion, the appeals panel ruled.
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