On July 26, 1971,
President Richard Nixon nominated Hand to a seat on the
United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama since Judge
Daniel Holcombe Thomas had taken senior status. The
United States Senate confirmed Hand on September 21, 1971, and he received his commission the next day. Hand would serve as the district's Chief Judge from 1981 to 1989. He assumed
senior status on January 19, 1989, and continued to handle that reduced caseload until his death on September 6, 2008, in Mobile. Illinois State University history professor considers Judge Hand an important figure in America's culture wars because of his longstanding disagreement with incorporation of the Bill of Rights at the state level, which he argues influenced
Edwin Meese and Justice
Antonin Scalia. Judge Hand's most public cases were of two types: involving desegregation and his concept of secular humanism.
Desegregation cases Desegregation of schools in Alabama, including Mobile, had been the subject of controversy since the United States Supreme Court's decisions in
Brown v. Board of Education in 1955, but the legal case was first filed in 1963 by the NAACP Legal Defense fund on behalf of Birdie Mae Davis, and other parents organized by
John LeFlore, the head of the local NAACP and who died shortly after being elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1971. That case was initially assigned to then Chief Judge
Daniel Holcombe Thomas and appeals reached the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals several times before the United States Supreme Court decided it as a companion case to
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education in 1971, After issuing several orders in conformity with that decision, Judge Thomas assumed senior status and the case was reassigned to Judge Hand. By the time it reached Judge Hand, it had become primarily subject to negotiations, and consent orders. Judge Hand appointed a large advisory committee and two supervisory scholars, who assisted in guiding the process. Ultimately, Judge Hand dismissed the case in 1997. Meanwhile, in 1975, Wiley Bolden and other prominent black Mobilians filed a lawsuit challenging Mobile's at-large system of selecting commissioners, that diluted the black vote, and Lila Brown initiated a similar lawsuit with respect to the Mobile County Board of Education. Because the city hired Hand's former law firm (by then Hand, Arendall, Bedsole, Greaves and Johnston) to handle its defense, Hand recused himself and judge
Virgil Pittman (who succeeded Thomas as Chief Judge) was assigned the case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided as
City of Mobile v. Bolden.
Secular humanism cases Beginning in 1987 Hand again received considerable attention for his views concerning secular humanism. In a prayer breakfast speech commemorating Law Day in
Anniston, Alabama in 1986, Hand condemned spreading immorality in society, which he blamed on a human-centered worldview. He presided over two cases involving religious issues, and the trial of
Smith v. Board of Commissioners of Mobile County was about to start. The sister case brought by parent Ishmael Jafree against compulsory school had begun in 1981, and Judge Hand allowed a group of local evangelical Christians to intervene, who alleged that they were the victims of the school board's policy of secular humanism. Judge Hand ruled for the plaintiffs in a case against the
Alabama Association of School Boards claiming that
textbooks used in
Alabama promoted
secular humanism, and as such were in violation of the
Establishment clause. In his 172-page ruling, later republished as a book with a foreword by Richard John Neuhaus Judge Hand ordered the removal of forty-four texts across the state in subjects such as history and social studies. The case was brought in Hand's district after his opinions regarding a 1982
school prayer ruling in Alabama. The
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit unanimously reversed him, with Judge Frank stating that Hand held a "misconception of the relationship between church and state mandated by the establishment clause," commenting also that the textbooks did not show "an attitude antagonistic to theistic belief. The message conveyed by these textbooks is one of neutrality: the textbooks neither endorse theistic religion as a system of belief, nor discredit it." Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court disagreed with Hand's assessment, finding Alabama's silent school prayer law unconstitutional in
Wallace v. Jaffree (1985). ==Death==