Waln v. Dysart School District

Larissa Waln’s graduation cap with beading and feather.
Source: Native American Rights Fund

In May of 2019, LaRissa Waln, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Native American tribe, was preparing to graduate from Valley Vista High School in Arizona. She decided to attach “a sacred and religious eagle plume” as well as traditional beads to her graduation cap. She asked several school employees for permission to wear the beads and plume on her cap, and her requests were denied. Officials said she was allowed to wear the adornments anywhere else on her body, but Waln’s father said “the feather could only be worn on top of her graduation cap”. Upon walking into the stadium where the graduation ceremony was being held, school officials would not permit Waln to enter unless she removed the religious items she affixed to the cap. She refused, and did not attend her graduation ceremonies. She then sued the school district, citing the First Amendment’s rights to free exercise of her religion.

The school district specifically argued “This commencement dress code is neutral and applied generally to all graduating students. […] the District will permit a student to wear an eagle feather in his or her hair, as a necklace or as other jewelry. This will allow her to participate in the exercise of her religious symbolic speech at the graduation.” Graduation ceremonies for the District were held in a leased, private stadium, and attendance is not required for students to receive a diploma. The school further said that the rule against any adornments on caps was “a reasonable restriction on student speech... to preserve the sanctity and formality of the commencement ceremony.”

When Waln’s father requested to see the District’s policy on graduation caps and gowns, they “could not” furnish one. Further, Waln alleged that a student at another high school in the same district was allowed to wear a different, secular symbol on their cap: a breast cancer-awareness sticker.

Arizona state law prohibits burdens of the free exercise of religion if a policy is “the least restrictive means of furthering [a] compelling governmental interest.” On Waln’s behalf, the Arizona American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued, “There is simply no compelling governmental interest in prohibiting her from exercising her Native American faith in this context [… and] denying Ms. Waln’s proposed religious accommodation would not be the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest.”

On February 28, the United States District Court for the District of Arizona ruled in favor of the District. In regards to Waln’s claims of free exercise, the District Court cited the 1992 Supreme Court case Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, which unanimously ruled that a city ordinance prohibiting animal sacrifice violated the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. As the law in question directly targeted the church, the majority opinion of Hialeah quoted, “a law that is neutral and of general applicability need not be justified by a compelling governmental interest, even if the law has the incidental effect of burdening a particular religious practice”. Also, citing a dissent of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District — a case that decided students’ wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War was protected speech — the Court said no part of the Constitution “compels the teachers, parents, and elected school officials to surrender control of the American public school system to public school students.”

The District Court summarized, stating that “The graduation dress code itself was content-neutral and, as written, generally applicable.”

I disagree with the District Court, and agree with Waln and the Arizona ACLU. While the burden imposed upon Waln by the District may have appeared “incidental,” the Arizona District Court, ironically enough, cites a dissent from Tinker, one of the most important Supreme Court cases for students’ free speech: allowing them to peacefully, passively protest the Vietnam war through black armbands. Waln’s religious expression is the same, in that it is passive and a free expression of a specific student’s religious practices. One could argue that graduation ceremonies are just as vital to a student’s education as mandated school assemblies or after school, during both of which times free exercise is protected just as much as during the school day. In my opinion, the District’s desire for “unity and sanctity” reek of the logic in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, in which “national unity” was (erroneously) seen as a compelling enough reason to compel students’ repeating of the Pledge. Additionally, the District’s guidance that wearing the religious emblems elsewhere on her person could “allow her to… exercise” her religion is confounding: who is a school district to state what can and cannot fulfill an individual’s religious beliefs? Allowing students to participate in individual exercise of religion, in accordance with their beliefs, is vital, and, unfortunately, this facially neutral law served against the interests of Waln’s right to free exercise.

Note: this article was corrected from its original version to update material facts of Hialeah.