THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND STATE BANS ON TEACHERS' RELIGIOUS GARB

A writer offers an analysis of government bans on religious attire worn by public school teachers. 

As Walker (Cultivating Empathy, 2016, etc.) observes, the perennial contest between political secularism and religious liberty is hardly new, but it seems to have hit a fevered pitch not just in the United States, but in Europe as well. The author astutely unpacks one controversial issue at the heart of that tension: the permissibility of a state to ban public school teachers from donning religious garb while they work. The focus of the author’s study is a landmark statutory law passed in the late 19th century that did precisely that (“The first such ban of religious garb was instituted in Pennsylvania in 1894 and was clearly directed toward Catholic nuns teaching in the public schools”). This law remains the only one of its kind unsuccessfully challenged in the U.S. Walker applies a five-step analytical process to the law—“scaffolding” the work—that begins with a “synthesized” battery of judicial tests organized around just cause. Additionally, he provides a searching account of the “quasquicentennial-old debate in the United States,” including a masterfully meticulous treatment of the relevant law and literature, the factual context, and a concluding legal analysis. The legal assessment focuses on the extent to which the Pennsylvania law potentially contradicts both the establishment of religion and the free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. The author finally concludes that the law is fundamentally indefensible on both counts. Among other reasons, it coercively “suppresses the religious identities of public servants” and favors some faiths over others. Walker’s credentials are unimpeachable: He’s the executive director of 1791 Delegates, a group of constitutional and human rights specialists. His command of the germane material—legal, historical, and even philosophical—is simply extraordinary. More than a legal argument, the book is a sweeping account of the nature of public education within a liberal democracy—its proper purposes and limitations. He also sensibly considers the broader international context, especially cases that have come before the European Court of Human Rights. The author’s argument is a complex one, but it’s written in the kind of accessible, jargon-free prose that should be digestible for even the layperson. 

A thorough, magisterial account of a timely and historically important legal debate.