Jaffree V. Alabama Case Study

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Ishmael Jaffree, a resident of Alabama has three children that attend the school district of mobile Alabama. He filed a complaint on the mobile school board and some of the children teachers for using a law that gave a time for voluntary prayer of time of mediatization. A statute was passed that allowed teacher to lead the students in a organized prayer to Almighty God. In this case Jaffree said this violated the first amendment.
The court case was also first view in a lower court in the district after this it moved to the United state court of appeals of the eleventh circuit. In this they voted that the the second statute was constitutional because it was just for a moment of silence for prayer of meditation. But they did find that the third statute was not constitutional because it forced a certain religion of the children which violated the first.
The arguments for each the plaintiff and the defendant were very valid. The first argument for the plaintiff was that the teachers and the school district were forcing a certain religion of the children. They also said that the moment of silence that the school used was just for religion not really for the moment of meditation. The defendant the teachers just said that they were following the rules of …show more content…
In the decision by the united states supreme court on june 4, 1985 was in favor of the plaintiff on a 6-3 . The justices that voted in favor of the majority was O’Connor, Stevens, Powell, Blackmun, Marshall, and Brennan. John Paul Stevens wrote the Majority opinion which said the alabamas prayer was unconstitutional to the first amendment establishment clause. There were concurrent opinion Powell and O’Connor. They were a little different then because the they said that the moment of silence was constitutional but the decision for the majority was made because the push for a religious
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