Court Upholds Ban on Prayer at Graduations

A state Court of Appeal on Friday barred religious invocations from public high school graduation ceremonies, ruling that this widely observed tradition violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

The three-member panel unanimously upheld an injunction issued by an Alameda Superior Court judge in 1983 prohibiting references to “almighty God” in an invocation at a Livermore high school.

The appellate court said that while the yearly religious exercise was “not a particularly egregious intrusion” of government on religion, it still must be struck down under both the U.S. and California constitutions.

The ruling, the first of its kind by an appellate court, is binding on trial courts throughout the state. Although officially sponsored prayer has long been banned from the classroom, religious invocations are still often a part of graduations in public schools, attorneys said.

Many Religions

Appellate Justice Norman Elkington, writing Friday’s ruling for the court, noted that Californians are a particularly diverse group of people who practice many religions, such as Buddhism, Taoism and secular humanism that do not teach belief in the existence of God.

“Any religious invocation, and certainly any invocation including a reference to God, therefore almost necessarily will not comport with the beliefs of a number of persons present and may in fact be offensive to some,” Elkington wrote.

The decision came as a victory for a small group of students who sparked a heated local controversy in 1983 by challenging the use of a religious invocation at graduation ceremonies at Granada High School.

Leslie Ann Bennett, a senior at the school, and Wilbur Miller, a Livermore taxpayer, finally brought suit and obtained a court order forbidding the mention of God at the ceremonies.

The order was obeyed at a tense outdoor observance carried out under tight security after reports of bomb threats at the school. Many in the crowd of 750 cheered when a biplane flew overhead towing a banner reading, “God Bless the Graduates.”

An attorney that represented Livermore school district officials said Friday’s decision will probably be appealed to the state Supreme Court or, if necessary, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We’re certainly disappointed,” said Alameda Deputy County Counsel Dianna Thurston. “We felt that given the circumstances, this widely practiced observance would fall on the permissible side of the Constitution.”

The ruling drew praise from Margaret C. Crosby of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, one of the attorneys representing Bennett and Miller.

Extends Principle

“It’s been clear that school prayer is impermissible in the classroom, and this decision extends that principle to a very important function--high school graduation,” Crosby said.

“The court recognized that when we’re dealing with a very symbolic event, it’s particularly inappropriate to have a religious invocation. “It’s a divisive force. You’re telling religious minorities they are not truly part of the community.”

In its decision, the appellate panel rejected district contentions that the traditional, nondenominational invocation, rendered each year by a student or clergyman, did not amount to government establishment of religion.

The panel acknowledged that courts in other states had been divided on the issue. But Elkington, in an opinion joined by Appellate Justices John T. Racanelli and William A. Newsom, said the panel had concluded that the invocation failed to meet well-established constitutional tests because its “primary purpose” was religious, it conveyed a “message of endorsement” of a particular creed and it represented an “entanglement” of government and religion.

Opening Sessions

The panel conceded that the U.S. Supreme Court had approved some government-sponsored religious observances, such as the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer.

But that was a narrow exception, Elkington said, pointing out that legislative invocations in this country traced back to Colonial times before adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

”. . . Our Founding Fathers made no provision for graduation invocations; indeed, public schools were not a fact of American life until nearly a century later,” he said.

The Supreme Court in recent years has maintained a high wall of separation between church and state in cases involving public schools, Elkington said. Several high court decisions have underscored a belief that younger people would be more susceptible to “religious indoctrination” and peer pressure than would adults, he said.