Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County (original) (raw)

dbo:abstract

Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, 827 F.2d 684 (11th Cir. 1987), was a lawsuit in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the Mobile County Public School System could use textbooks which purportedly promoted "secular humanism", characterized by the complainants as a religion. Parents and other citizens brought a lawsuit against the school board, alleging that the school system was teaching the tenets of secular humanism, an anti-theistic religion. The complainants asked that forty-four different elementary through high school level textbooks be removed from the curriculum. After an initial ruling in a federal district court in favor of the plaintiffs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that as long as the school was motivated by a secular purpose, it didn't matter whether the curriculum and texts shared ideas held by one or more religious groups. The Court found that the texts in question promoted important secular values (tolerance, self-respect, logical decision making) and thus the use of the textbooks neither unconstitutionally advanced a nontheistic religion nor inhibited theistic religions. This case is occasionally and incorrectly cited as proving that 'secular humanism' is a religion. The text below shows the Circuit Court, in overturning the District Court decision, made no such finding. They both set aside the question as moot and offered that even if it were (and they weren't saying it is), the teaching of science is not invalidated purely because of its association with secular humanism. Excerpt below from the Circuit Court decision (cited earlier): The Supreme Court has never established a comprehensive test for determining the "delicate question" of what constitutes a religious belief for purposes of the first amendment, and we need not attempt to do so in this case, for we find that, even assuming that secular humanism is a religion for purposes of the establishment clause, Appellees have failed to prove a violation of the establishment clause through the use in the Alabama public schools of the textbooks at issue in this case. (en)

dbo:thumbnail

wiki-commons:Special:FilePath/US-CourtOfAppeals-11thCircuit-Seal.png?width=300

dbo:wikiPageExternalLink

dbo:wikiPageID

1220822 (xsd:integer)

dbo:wikiPageLength

9369 (xsd:nonNegativeInteger)

dbo:wikiPageRevisionID

1087847242 (xsd:integer)

dbo:wikiPageWikiLink

dbp:case

17280.0 (dbd:second)

dbp:citations

41 (xsd:integer)
56 (xsd:integer)
103 (xsd:integer)
17280.0 (dbd:second)

dbp:court

dbr:United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Eleventh_Circuit

dbp:courtseal

US-CourtOfAppeals-11thCircuit-Seal.png (en)

dbp:decidedate

0001-08-26 (xsd:gMonthDay)

dbp:decideyear

1987 (xsd:integer)

dbp:fullname

Douglas T. Smith, et al v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, et al (en)

dbp:googlescholar

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case%3Fcase=11259545354464663065

dbp:joinmajority

Clark, Eaton (en)

dbp:judges

dbp:justia

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/827/684/3220/

dbp:lawsapplied

dbr:First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

dbp:litigants

Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County (en)

dbp:majority

Johnson (en)

dbp:openjurist

https://openjurist.org/827/f2d/684

dbp:prior

655 (xsd:integer)

dbp:wikiPageUsesTemplate

dct:subject

rdfs:comment

Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, 827 F.2d 684 (11th Cir. 1987), was a lawsuit in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the Mobile County Public School System could use textbooks which purportedly promoted "secular humanism", characterized by the complainants as a religion. (en)

rdfs:label

Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County (en)

owl:sameAs

prov:wasDerivedFrom

wikipedia-en:Smith_v._Board_of_School_Commissioners_of_Mobile_County?oldid=1087847242&ns=0

foaf:depiction

wiki-commons:Special:FilePath/US-CourtOfAppeals-11thCircuit-Seal.png

foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf

wikipedia-en:Smith_v._Board_of_School_Commissioners_of_Mobile_County

is dbo:wikiPageRedirects of

is dbo:wikiPageWikiLink of

is foaf:primaryTopic of

wikipedia-en:Smith_v._Board_of_School_Commissioners_of_Mobile_County