Justices Uphold School Bible Clubs : High Court Finds No Violation of Church-State Separation

Student prayer groups must be allowed to meet at public schools that permit other organized extracurricular activities, the Supreme Court ruled today.

The justices, voting 8 to 1, said a 1984 federal law aimed at permitting religious clubs in public schools does not violate constitutionally required separation of church and state.

The court overruled Omaha school officials who refused to approve a high school Bible-reading club.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the court, said the Equal Access Act of 1984 passes the court’s longstanding three-part test aimed at assuring separation of church and state.

The law grants equal access to both secular and religious speech, does not have the primary effect of advancing religion and does not cause excessive entanglement between government and religion, she said.

O’Connor said there is little risk that students will view an extracurricular Bible-reading club as indicating that school officials endorse religion.

“The possibility of student peer pressure remains,” she said. “But there is little if any risk of official state endorsement or coercion where no formal classroom activities are involved and no school officials actively participate.”

Congress in the Equal Access Act said public high schools accepting federal aid must not discriminate against groups based on “the religious, political, philosophical or other content of the speech at such meetings.”

The law requires access to school facilities for religious clubs if other “non-curriculum-related student groups” are allowed to meet.

At Westside High School in Omaha, officials authorized about 30 such activities, including chess, scuba diving and photography clubs.

The officials said the clubs are related to classroom work or other aspects of the school curriculum. For example, they said chess helps students learn mathematics and logic and scuba diving is tied to the school’s physical fitness program.

The officials said the 1984 act, therefore, should not apply to them. But they also argued that if the law does apply, it should be declared unconstitutional as a government-sponsored establishment of religion.

Some groups who supported the school officials, such as the National School Boards Assn., said the 1984 law is a thinly disguised move to return prayer to the public schools. The Supreme Court in 1962 banned organized, school-sponsored prayer sessions for students.

The Bush Administration defended the 1984 law as a legitimate attempt to protect religious liberty for students.

Today, Justices Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan concurred in the outcome of the Westside High School case, but expressed some serious reservations.

Marshall, in an opinion joined by Brennan, said schools such as Westside must be careful to “effectively disassociate themselves from the religious speech that now may become commonplace in their facilities.”

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented. He said today’s ruling could force schools to open their doors “to every religious, political or social organization, no matter how controversial or distasteful its views may be.”