Prayer Ban Upheld for High School 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 County Superior Court judge in 1983 prohibiting references to “almighty God” in an invocation at a Livermore high school.

In Orange County, the ruling apparently would end religious invocations at high school graduation ceremonies in the Brea-Olinda and Laguna Beach Union school districts. Spokesmen for the six other county high school districts that were reached for comment late Friday said the ruling apparently would not apply to their districts--either because they no longer have invocations or because they said their invocations are purely “inspirational” and without religious references.

The appellate court said while the yearly religious exercise was “not a particularly egregious intrusion” of government on religion, it must still 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 barred from the classroom, religious invocations are still often a part of graduations in public schools, attorneys said.

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.

“We have a standard high school graduation invocation with references to God,” said Dennis Smith, Laguna Beach Unified School District superintendent. “We’ll have to look at the court case and make a decision about how to have invocations in the future with this prohibition against religious references.”

The decision came as a victory for a small group of students who sparked a heated 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 who 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 decision was also criticized by Edgar Z. Seal, superintendent of the Brea-Olinda Unified School District, where religious invocations are held at high school graduations.

“In one sense the court is being overzealous and depriving people of the opportunity to have fundamental beliefs and the ability to bring people together in a common bond through invocation or prayer,” Seal said. “And I say this as a believer wholeheartedly in the need for the separation of church and state.”

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.

“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.”

This concern about not causing conflict among religious groups was cited as the chief reason why invocations are no longer given at graduations in the Fullerton Joint Union, Huntington Beach Union and Irvine Unified school districts.

“We don’t have invocations at our graduations because we’re aware of the need to maintain the separation of church and state,” said Fullerton Joint Union district spokeswoman Shirley Finton.

Spokesmen for Saddleback Valley Unified, Capistrano Unified and Garden Grove Unified school districts said that while their high schools have invocations, they do not believe the court ruling applied to their districts, because their invocations were not religious in nature.

“We have inspirational readings and thoughts for the day rather than the prayers you have in traditional invocations,” said Donald Ames, Saddleback Valley Unified School District superintendent.

Jackie Cerra, spokeswoman for Capistrano Unified, said: “The decision doesn’t apply to us because we don’t use prayers. We knew what legislation was pending on this issue, so we have attempted not to use invocations in the traditional sense--ones with prayer. Sure, they’re listed as invocations on (graduation) programs, but they’re actually just comments of welcome and good luck wishes for the graduates.”

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.

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.

Times staff writer Doug Brown contributed to this story from Orange County.