Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States

Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Submitted January 7, 1892 Argued January 7, 1892 Decided February 29, 1892
Full case name	Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States
Citations	143 U.S. 457 (more) 12 S. Ct. 511; 36 L. Ed. 226; 1892 U.S. LEXIS 2036
Prior history	Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York
Holding
The circuit court did err when it held that the contract hiring an English rector was within the prohibition of the statute, which disallowed a "...person, company, partnership, or corporation, in any manner whatsoever to prepay the transportation, or in any way assist or encourage the importation or migration, of any alien or aliens, any foreigner or foreigners, into the United States ... under contract or agreement ... to perform labor or service of any kind in the United States...."
Court membership
Chief Justice Melville Fuller Associate Justices Stephen J. Field · Joseph P. Bradley John M. Harlan · Horace Gray Samuel Blatchford · Lucius Q.C. Lamar II David J. Brewer · Henry B. Brown
Case opinions
Majority	Brewer, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. chap. 164, 23 St. p. 332

Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892)^[1], was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding an employment contract between The Church of the Holy Trinity, New York and an English (Anglican) priest.

1885 Act

Contracts to import labor were forbidden by the U.S. Code, and specifically by an 1885 law prohibiting "the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor or service of any kind in the United States, its territories, and the District of Columbia."^[1] The court held that a minister was not a foreign laborer under the statute even though he was a foreigner.

Court Decision

“There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons. They are organic utterances. They speak the voice of the entire people. While because of a general recognition of this truth the question has seldom been presented to the courts, yet we find that in Updegraph v. Com., 11 Serg. & R. 394, 400, it was decided that, ‘Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania.”
— Supreme Court Decision, 1892 Church of the Holy Trinity Decision v United States

The court used the soft plain meaning rule to interpret the statute in this case. Justice David Josiah Brewer made a principle of statutory construction that "It is a familiar rule that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit nor within the intention of its makers." Its decision stated that "the circuit court did err when it held that the contract hiring an English rector was within the prohibition of the statute, which disallowed a "...person, company, partnership, or corporation, in any manner whatsoever to prepay the transportation, or in any way assist or encourage the importation or migration, of any alien or aliens, any foreigner or foreigners, into the United States ... under contract or agreement ... to perform labor or service of any kind in the United States..."

Christian nation

The following quote from the decision has given rise to the misunderstanding that in 1892 the Supreme Court endorsed the idea that the United States is officially in law a "Christian Nation":

These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation. 143 U.S. 457 (1892)^[2]

Perhaps realizing how his phrasing could create mischief and misinterpretation, Justice Brewer published a book in 1905 titled The United States: A Christian Nation. In it he wrote:

But in what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that 'congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all. [...] Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal organization is independent of all religions.

Justice Brewer's decision was not, therefore, any attempt to argue that the laws in the United States should enforce Christianity or reflect solely Christian concerns and beliefs. He was simply making an observation which is consistent with the fact that people in this country tend to be Christian.^[3]

Posterior interpretations

This case is cited most often for its determination of how legislative intent can be determined. Justice Antonin Scalia has differed with the holding in the Holy Trinity decision as the "prototypical case" in which a judge follows the intent of the legislature rather than the text of the statute, and thus as being in opposition to his judicial philosophy of textualism. The textualist position holds that courts should follow the text of a law rather than attempt to read exceptions into the law in accordance with the legislative intent. Scalia has thus criticized the principle of the Holy Trinity case as "nothing but an invitation to judicial lawmaking."^[4]

The case is also famous for Justice Brewer's statements that America is a "Christian nation." While this case was not specifically about religion, the court considered America's Christian identity to be a strong support for its conclusion. Almost half of the text of the opinion is spent demonstrating America's Christian identity, in order to show that congress could not have intended to prohibit foreign ministers. Rejecting this application of Congressional intent argument in Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U.S. 440 (1989),^[2] Justice Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor, wrote:

"The central support for the Court's ultimate conclusion that Congress did not intend the law to cover Christian ministers is its lengthy review of the 'unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation,' and which were taken to prove that it could not 'be believed that a Congress of the United States intended to make it a misdemeanor for a church of this country to contract for the services of a Christian minister residing in another nation.' I should think the potential of this doctrine to allow judges to substitute their personal predilections for the will of the Congress is so self-evident from the case which spawned it as to require no further discussion of its susceptibility to abuse."' Id., at 471.

See also

• History of religion in the United States
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 143

References

1. ^ National Capital Topics; The Foreign Contract Labor Bill Passed. The Senate Makes Several Amendments To The House Bill--Only Nine Votes Against It, New York Times, February 19, 1885
2. ^ Eidsmoe, John (1995). Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers. Baker Academic. ISBN 0801052319 
3. ^ http://atheism.about.com/od/churchstatemyths/a/AmericaChristianNation.htm
4. ^ Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law 21 (1998)

External links

• ^ Full text of the opinion courtesy of Justia.com
• ^ Full text of the opinion courtesy of Justia.com
• Language and Law on Holy Trinity Church v. U.S. (1892)