Page "Wallace v. Jaffree" Paragraph 4

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama allowed the practice and found in favor of the defendants.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding the law unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the Alabama law violated constitutional principle.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, and Lewis Powell.

Justice Powell wrote a separate concurring opinion, and Justice Sandra Day O ' Connor wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justices William H. Rehnquist ( later Chief Justice ) and Byron White issued dissenting opinions.

Rehnquist asserted that the Court's Establishment Clause reasoning was flawed in as much as it was based on the writings of Thomas Jefferson, who was not the author of the Clause.