Schultz v. Medina Valley ISD: When Cultures and Beliefs Collide (Or How Air Conditioning Changed Texas)

By Hon. Fred Biery

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s character, Scout, observed the Christian Women’s Missionary Society speaking intolerantly of local Negroes, but nevertheless collected money for missionaries to bring salvation to people of the same race in Africa. Seeing this hypocrisy, Scout said, “Humans are a peculiar lot.” In this case, the Court also wrote in the third person, but referred to that species as Homo sapiens.

As we know, Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, did his duty, as every lawyer must when our oath to the Rule of Law and the Constitution requires us to do so.

This evening’s program is about that kind of case and those kinds of lawyers: Craig Wood who advocated for First Amendment freedom of religious expression and Greg Lipper who advocated for First Amendment freedom from government imposition of particular sectarian practices.

While we will never know what went on behind the closed doors of the mediation, we can be reasonably sure that we would not be having this program without the skillfulness of Mediator Don Philbin helping to craft the settlement. We would not be here because this case would still be in litigation or on appeal.

This controversy has its microcosmic genesis in small-town Texas before air-conditioning made it possible for foreign Homo sapiens to come across the Red River and not leave in May when the temperature began to rise. Indeed, some of us believe we should forget about guarding the Rio Grande River and pay more attention to the migration across the Red River.

That north to south diaspora has caused the population of this five-county area to grow from 500,000 in 1950 to 2.2 million today, with basically the same water supply. But that is a program for another day.

Migration brought not only quantity to the census, but also differences in culture and spiritual beliefs. The “city” of San Antonio was but a big small town. Loop 410 and North Star Mall did not exist, and the airport was surrounded by cows, not cars.

Going to Karen Monsen’s hometown of Pflugerville, or to Boerne or Castroville in the 1960s, one would find a single flashing yellow traffic light and maybe a Dairy Queen. Round Rock, Texas, had a 2A high school. It now has five or six high schools and is effectively part of Austin. Ironically, one of the Round Rock high schools this year had a valedictorian of the Muslim faith who spoke while wearing her traditional Muslim hijab, but she did not exhort the audience to join in her beliefs.

Those culturally and religiously homogenous small towns of Texas are a thing of the past.

But in a serendipitous happenstance of post-World War II San Antonio, some of us were fortunate to grow up in a neighborhood whose triangular boundaries generally went from Woodlawn Lake to St. Mary’s University and back to Jefferson High School.

The Lopez, Tamez and Carreño families went to Mass at St. Ann’s, Little Flower, or St. Paul’s. Across the street from the latter, the Bremers practiced their Mormon faith. Six blocks down the street, Agudas Achim Synagogue was the spiritual home of the Epstein, Lauterstein, and Katz families. By the way, Mrs. Katz still bore the tattoo number intolerantly given to her by Nazi Christians. Within bicycle-riding distance, there were numerous Protestant churches, where white people and black people worshipped the same Risen Lord, but did so in separation rather than communion with each other. Some distance away, the Cassebs, Merys, and Karams were at St. George Maronite as Lebanese Christians, and the Bournias family went to St. Sophia’s in the Greek Orthodox tradition.

While we were Sabbath segregated by race, ethnicity, and creed, we were school integrated, resulting in not only academic knowledge but also exposure to, and hopefully tolerance of, different cultural traditions and beliefs.

Notwithstanding that diversity, when this case gained national attention, several Jewish friends called or wrote and reminded me that they were still required to stand up every morning and recite the Lord’s Prayer with the rest of us. One of “us” was my friend, Lynn. We spent the night in each other’s homes in elementary school and were captains of the school patrol and later captains of the high school football and basketball teams. Lynn went on to coach football for many years at Medina Valley High School and is now the high school security officer. A small world, indeed.

Another example of how things have changed from the days of isolated small-town Texas is the impact of technology. An example of that technology is an early cell phone from the 1989-90 Texas Supreme Court race. It weighed about four pounds, cost $3,000, and its use was pretty much limited to the Interstate 35 and Interstate 10 corridors.

While that technology fosters communication, it doesn’t always improve cultural understanding.

Twenty-five years ago, a young Jewish lawyer from New Jersey had his first job as a law clerk for a South Texas Hispanic federal judge. In New Jersey, his nickname for “Henry” would be “Hank.” In San Antonio culture, Henry is Enrique, and the nickname, Kike, is pronounced “Kee-Kay.” On the first day of work, the federal judge, trying to make a new law clerk feel welcome, sent him a note which read: “Hey, Kike, where would you like to go to lunch?” But the Jewish law clerk reading the note saw it this way: “Hey, Kīke, where would you like to go to lunch?” Clearly, “Kīke” is a pejorative term to those of the Jewish faith and not a term of endearment. Same spelling, different interpretations. The young law clerk is now United States Magistrate Judge Henry Bemporad, and the judge is United States Circuit Judge Ed Prado.

Bottom line, ladies and gentlemen: When everyone in a community is culturally and religiously similar, no one complains or files a lawsuit. When society changes and new people move in, the issues are joined, and the courts must decide. The alternatives are the religious wars of European history or the sectarian strife of the Middle East today.

Postscripts

1. Some have asked how judges deal with these high profile, and sometimes dangerous, cases. I suggest regular readings of Rudyard Kipling’s “If” (If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…) and modest amounts of red wine.

2. The Non-Kumbaya Order apparently received considerable attention. A young lawyer approached me in Washington, D.C. and asked, “Are you the Judge Biery who wrote the Non-Kumbaya Order?” I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Your order has gone viral on the Internet.” After she explained to me what the Internet is, I said, “Well, young lady, at this age, if I can’t be virile, I can at least be viral.”

 

For the San Antonio Lawyer www.adrtoolbox.com/?attachment_id=26550

 
The settlement agreement and other court filed documents are available at www.txwd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Cases/schultz/default.asp.

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Tags: Medina Valley, San Antonio, Texas