The Full Gospel Interdenominational Church in Manchester, CT may enter a partnership with the federal government to run its community's Post Office, but must distinguish its religious functions from government functions, according to a 2nd Circuit decision released today.
In areas of the country in which the US Postal Service does not maintain an office, partnerships with private entities provide a location and staff to operate a Contract Postal Unit (CPU). After Bertram Cooper, a Manchester citizen, challenged the arrangement with Full Gospel – which housed its storefront postal service in the same building as its church activities "with some spillover" – a district court found that while the partnership itself was legal, the presence of religious materials adorning the postal area was not.
Today, the 2nd Circuit agreed – to an extent – that a violation of the Establishment Clause had taken place. While the lower court ordered all religious displays at the CPU be removed, the Appeals Court ruling authored by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs provided narrower relief.
We conclude that an Establishment Clause violation occurred at the Manchester CPU, but that any such violation is limited to the area of the CPU performing the public function; all other areas of the CPU remain the province of the private entity. Accordingly, by way of remedy, we require that the postal counter be free of religious material, and that visual cues distinguish the space operating as a postal facility from the space functioning as the private property of the Church.
The church, it's worth noting, runs the postal business through a separately incorporated not-for profit entity. Some interesting additional quotes from the decision are in the extended post below.
On standing:
Several times, the Supreme Court has considered the problem of standing in the Establishment Clause context, but so far the Court has announced no reliable and handy principles of analysis. . . Lower courts are left to find a threshold for injury and determine somewhat arbitrarily whether that threshold has been reached. In short, there is uncertainty concerning how to apply the injury in fact requirement in the Establishment Clause context.
…
Applying Sullivan, we must conclude that Cooper has alleged a sufficiently “direct and personal stake” in the controversy to confer standing. Cooper claims that he was made uncomfortable by direct contact with religious displays that were made a part of his experience using the postal facility nearest his home, and that upon complaint, he was advised to alter his behavior. Under Sullivan, these allegations state an injury in fact sufficient to support standing.
On whether the CPU (in this case, the church's non-profit business, SYI) is a state actor:
[W]e conclude that SYI is a state actor under the public function test because it performs–at least in some parts of the facility–“activit[ies] that traditionally ha[ve] been the exclusive, or near exclusive, function of the State.”
That is not to say, however, that all of SYI serves a public function, any more than selling shovels becomes a public function when a CPU is located in a hardware store.SYI is an independent, separate and distinct not-for-profit entity incorporated for the Church’s private use and purposes. The extent of state action correlates directly with the performance of the public function, which here is limited to those areas where the business of the CPU is conducted.
On whether CPU contracts with religious entitites necessarily violate the Constitution:
With respect to the CPU program, the government has espoused a neutral position: it will contract for CPU services with both religious and secular entities; and, as to religious entities, the government makes no distinctions between faiths or sects. The fact that a CPU is located in a religious facility, or sponsored by a religious entity, or that its revenues benefit a particular faith, does not offend the Establishment Clause. Any violation must arise from the specific conditions of SYI’s structure and space, and its religious displays.
On whether SYI's religious displays fail the Court's "beleaguered" Lemon test:
We first ask whether there is a secular purpose for displaying religious material on the postal counter. We cannot think of one. The express and admitted purpose of the religious material is to raise awareness for the mission sponsored by the Church and to spread the Church’s Christian message. We have no trouble concluding that the displays on the postal counter soliciting prayer requests and advertising the mission express a distinctly religious purpose, and that they fail spectacularly under the first inquiry of Lemon. Having failed at the first juncture, there is no need to proceed further in the Lemon test, although it is no great stretch to say that the religious materials on the postal counter would also have a principal effect of advancing religion (and might arguably entangle the government excessively with religion). The religious displays on the postal counter clearly fail the Lemon test.
The presence of a disclaimer, the court notes, is helpful and must remain, but does not itself "prevent or cure a violation."
On whether CPU contracts with religious entitites necessarily violate the Constitution:
With respect to the CPU program, the government has espoused a neutral position: it will contract for CPU services with both religious and secular entities; and, as to religious entities, the government makes no distinctions between faiths or sects. The fact that a CPU is located in a religious facility, or sponsored by a religious entity, or that its revenues benefit a particular faith, does not offend the Establishment Clause. Any violation must arise from the specific conditions of SYI’s structure and space, and its religious displays.
On the remedy:
Ordinarily, when CPUs are housed in churches or synagogues or monasteries or mosques, customers are alerted to the facility’s religious status by cues such as ecclesiastical architecture, schedules of religious services, and religious iconography or statuary. SYI gives no visual cues to alert its customers to its function as a Christian outreach facility. So a customer walking into SYI might become bewildered as to whether a chapel has been made into a post office, or a post office has been made into a chapel.
…
The postal counter, post office boxes and shelving units must therefore be free of prayer cards and messages and must be cleared of religious material.[T]o differentiate the primary area serving the public function from the remainder of the space operating as a private ministry, SYI is directed to create and install a barrier in front of the postal counter that is a visual cue and gives a sense of passage from one area of the space into another, thereby delineating space exclusively dedicated to the public function from space dedicated to other things.
Trust me, I've extracted all the best parts! But if you want to read the whole thing, the opinion is here.
