The 2022 Case
AMC3 is a program TISL created to fill a gap between the moot court in law school and successful mock trial programs for high school and college students. Participation is limited to college students who are not in law school.
Legal teams of two to five members argue each side of a hypothetical case before the Tennessee Intercollegiate Supreme Court.
Important Dates
November 3
November 14
November 17-18
November 20
November 19
Briefs Due
Briefs returned to the AMC3 Teams
Preliminary Rounds
Final Round
Semifinal Round
Important Notes
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Attorney General applications are due to the Supreme Court at 9:00 am CST on Friday, November 18th , 2021.
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The Supreme Court significantly revised the ballot in 2021. For this year’s competition and encourages delegates to familiarize themselves with the changes. The ballot can be found as part of the AMC3 Handbook under the General Assembly tab.
The Brief
Each team submits a brief two weeks before the competition. Download MS Word template for brief. We strongly recommend preparing your brief in Microsoft Word. Alternate applications such as Google Docs frequently break the formatting.
Please submit your brief in a PDF format.
The Problem
In 2008, Houma Parish School Board President Don Carpenter proposed that an invocation be offered before each and every school board meeting by a school board member, and that policy was adopted in early 2009.
The invocation has always been a generic Christian prayer. It is offered by a member of the school board. It is always given within the first ten minutes of a meeting. The audience is always asked to rise and bow their heads, but no individual has been castigated for failing to do so, or pressured to alter their behavior, in the school board meeting itself. There is evidence that school board members do make note of who has failed to stand and have discussed with those individuals their motivations for failing to do so, along with methods to increase participation in the invocation.
The parties to this suit are Marie Gross, mother of Josephine Jackson, and Louis Nguyen. Jackson, a self-described “independent thinker,” is a student who is a near-constant presence at school board meetings. She has been repeatedly questioned by School Board President Carpenter about her refusal to bow her head during invocation.
The plaintiffs sued the school district and its adult board members in their official capacities, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and its state law counterpart, alleging violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that Defendants’ conduct of prayers at board meetings violates Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitution, a permanent injunction enjoining the Board and its members from continuing to violate Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, and nominal damages for past constitutional violations.
The Issue
(1) Whether invocations at school board meetings are constitutional under the Establishment Clause.
(2) Whether, if an invocation may be given at a school board meeting, such prayer can be said by a school board member.
Downloads
There are two downloads. The first download contains the full technical record from depositions to Certiorari plus the List of Authorities. The second is a closed List of Authorities. Lawyers may reference cases outside the List of Authorities insofar as they are quoted by a case in the List of Authorities.