Brown v. Gilmore
Chief Justice Rehnquist, acting alone as Circuit Justice, refused to block Virginia from continuing to enforce its law requiring a daily minute of silence in public schools while the challengers asked the full Court to take up their case.
He found that the students' and parents' claim that the law violated the First Amendment was not clear-cut enough to justify the extraordinary step of enjoining a state law before the Supreme Court had even agreed to hear the case.
How it got here: A federal district court granted summary judgment for the state and the Fourth Circuit affirmed; the challengers then asked a single Justice to enjoin the law pending Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Virginia public school students and their parents challenged a state law, effective July 2000, requiring every public school to observe a daily minute of silence. They argued the law amounted to an unconstitutional establishment of religion under the First Amendment, comparing it to an Alabama moment-of-silence law the Court had earlier struck down.
The question before the Court
Should Virginia be barred from enforcing its mandatory school "minute of silence" law while students and parents pursued their challenge to it?
Why it matters
Virginia's public schools were able to keep observing the daily minute of silence while the underlying lawsuit continued. The ruling also signals how high a bar applicants face when asking a single Justice to block a state law on an emergency basis, rather than waiting for full merits review.
What changes now
This is a temporary, single-Justice emergency ruling, not a decision on the merits. Virginia's minute-of-silence law remains in effect while the students' and parents' petition for certiorari is pending before the full Court, which may decide separately whether to take up the underlying constitutional question.
What this does not decide
The Circuit Justice expressly declined to express any view on the ultimate merits of the First Amendment challenge or to predict how the full Court would rule. This order only addresses whether an emergency injunction was warranted, not whether the law is constitutional.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Circuit Justice explained that because applicants sought an injunction against enforcement of a state statute rather than a simple stay of a lower court judgment, the only source of authority was the All Writs Act, which courts use sparingly and only in the most critical and urgent situations.
- Under that standard, an injunction is proper only when the legal rights at issue are 'indisputably clear' — meaning the applicants' claim must be almost certain to succeed, not merely plausible.
- The Circuit Justice compared this case to Wallace v. Jaffree, an earlier decision striking down a similar Alabama law, but noted the Fourth Circuit had distinguished Virginia's law because it had a clear secular purpose (responding to school violence) whereas Alabama's law admittedly had none.
- He also noted that, unlike the Alabama case where teachers allegedly led students in daily prayer, there was no evidence Virginia teachers used the minute of silence for religious purposes during the year the law had been in effect.
- Because the secular-purpose finding and the lack of any prayer-leading evidence cast real doubt on the First Amendment claim, the Circuit Justice concluded the applicants' legal rights were not indisputably clear, so the extraordinary remedy of an injunction was unwarranted.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Wallace v. Jaffree (472 U. S. 38)
Virginia's law had a secular purpose and no evidence of prayer-leading, unlike Alabama's law struck down there.