Ban on Prayer at School Rites Is Upheld by Supreme Court

The California Supreme Court, acting in a far-reaching test of the separation of church and state, Thursday refused to hear an appeal of a lower-court ruling prohibiting religious invocations at public high school graduation ceremonies.

School officials in Livermore had contended in their appeal that a traditional, student-written prayer at graduation was permissible under both the state and federal constitutions.

Last July, a three-member panel of the state Court of Appeal here unanimously upheld an injunction issued by an Alameda Superior Court judge in 1983 barring an invocation referring to “Almighty God” from ceremonies at a Livermore high school.

The panel held that under U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the Constitution commanded “absolute separation” of church and state.

Dropped Practice

While some districts in recent years have dropped the practice, invocations still are given at most graduation ceremonies in California, according to attorneys in the case.

William E. Rundstrom, the senior deputy Alameda County counsel representing the Livermore district, said it was possible an appeal would be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We had thought we had a pretty good shot for review by the (state) court because of the nature of the issue and the widespread practice of graduation invocations,” Rundstrom said.

“We tried to distance ourselves from the classroom prayer situation,” he said. “Here, we have mostly 18-year-olds in a brief, once-a-year ceremony, not younger, more impressionable students as a captive audience in a classroom setting.”

Meanwhile, the decision remains binding on trial courts throughout the state.

Margaret C. Crosby, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California who represented opponents of the invocation, said the action Thursday “is basically not a surprise.”

“School prayer is school prayer,” Crosby said. “The courts are saying that if prayer is unconstitutional in the classroom or on the playing field, it is also unconstitutional at graduation ceremonies.”

The case arose when a group of students at Granada High School in Livermore challenged the traditional prayer at graduation as unconstitutional.

Leslie Ann Bennett, a senior at the school, and Wilbur Miller, a Livermore taxpayer, finally brought suit and obtained a court order barring the invocation.

The appeal panel last summer affirmed the injunction, saying that the prayer amounted to an improper state endorsement of religion. Any reference to “Almighty God” might be offensive to some in the audience at graduation, the panel said.

Drew Distinction

In a subsequent petition for review to the state high court, attorneys for the school district sought to draw a distinction between the student-authored graduation prayer and the kind of official state-sponsored prayer that has been banned from the classroom for more than two decades.

Contrary to the panel’s ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has never mandated an “absolute separation” of church and state, the school attorneys said. They noted, for example, that the high court has upheld such traditional practices as city-sponsored Nativity scenes in Christmas displays and invocations by chaplains to begin legislative sessions.

The attorneys also cited the preamble to the California Constitution, which says: “We, the people of the state of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish the Constitution.”

The refusal of the state high court to hear the petition came in an order signed by Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas. None of the court’s seven members voted to review the case.

In other action Thursday, the court let stand a ruling denying worker’s compensation benefits to a construction worker who contended that he had contracted AIDS in “job-related” activities with prostitutes in Central Africa.

Appeal Rejected

The justices rejected an appeal from Paul Trejo, 46, a member of a 30-man crew that built roads and put up electrical towers in remote areas in Zaire from 1977 to 1980.

In the first ruling of its kind, a worker’s compensation judge held last February that Trejo was entitled to medical care and a weekly disability payment of $197.12 because he had acquired an “occupational disease” through contacts with prostitutes in a practice that was condoned by his employer.

The firm, Morrison Knudsen Co. of Boise, Ida., denied the company condoned or supplied prostitutes to workers.

In May, the award made by Judge Maurice J. Carey in Norwalk was overturned by the Worker’s Compensation Appeals Board. The board held that Trejo had not shown his disease arose from his employment. A state Court of Appeal later upheld the board.

In a petition for review to the state Supreme Court, Trejo contended that crew members, living in company-built camps, had been “encouraged and permitted to fraternize” with native women and to bring them into their rooms.

He said workers used a company truck to transport the women to the camp and sometimes had given a local village chief gasoline or diesel fuel as payment for procuring prostitutes.

Company Facilities

Trejo argued that worker’s compensation benefits were not limited to situations where employees are performing standard duties. Workers who must live in company facilities are considered to be performing services related to employment, and if they are injured, even in leisure time, they are entitled to compensation, he said.

In opposition, attorneys for the firm and its insurer noted that Trejo had testified that he had contracted gonorrhea over 20 times in his 30-month stay in the African republic in what they described as his “continuous and indiscriminate fornication.”

The company said there was no proof that Trejo had contracted acquired immune deficiency syndrome in Zaire. Pointing to evidence of Trejo’s active sexual history, the company said his injury was the result of his own “illegal and immoral conduct.”

Trejo was diagnosed as having AIDS in 1985 after he had returned to the United States from another construction job in Colombia. He is undergoing treatment at County-USC Medical Center.