Court May Ease Church-State Separation

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will decide whether a Rhode Island high school may include a prayer in its graduation ceremony--a signal that it may be ready to permit a broader role for religion in schools and in public life.

For at least two decades, the high court has been badly split on church and state issues, leading to a series of confused rulings on Christmas displays at city halls, prayers during public ceremonies and state aid to parochial schools.

Two years ago, the court’s four key conservatives called for a major shift in the law to allow the government to “accommodate” and encourage religion, so long as nonbelievers are not “coerced” to participate.

Last month, the Bush Administration urged the justices to hear the Rhode Island dispute and to adopt the looser standard on religion that had been advocated by the conservatives. Government should be permitted to sponsor ceremonies that reflect “the heritage of a deeply religious people,” U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr told the court.

On Monday, the justices announced that they would hear the Rhode Island case (Lee vs. Weisman, 90-1014) in the fall.

The ruling, likely to be announced early next year, could allow the government to display religious symbols and to provide some aid to religious groups. However, it is believed unlikely that the high court will tamper with its still-controversial ban on prayers in schools in this case.

In 1962, the court prohibited official prayers in school as a violation of the 1st Amendment ban on laws “respecting an establishment of religion.”

The court, then dominated by liberals, concluded that this clause demanded a strict “separation of church and state,” a phrase taken from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802.

The conservatives, including Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, have long disputed the “separation of church and state” doctrine. According to Rehnquist, the 1st Amendment forbids only the establishment of a national church or mandatory contributions to religion. Otherwise, he says, government may encourage and support religion in general.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Byron R. White also have called for a change in the court’s approach to allow more government support for religion.

However, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the fifth conservative, so far has refused to join them. She has insisted that any government action that appears to endorse religion--such as a display of a creche in a city hall--violates the 1st Amendment.

The outcome probably will rest on the vote of the newest justice, David H. Souter. As New Hampshire’s attorney general, Souter defended an attempt by his state’s Legislature in 1975 to reinstate “the traditional Lord’s Prayer” in the schools. In addition, he defended the governor’s 1978 order to state employees to fly flags at half staff on Good Friday to “memorialize the death of Christ on the Cross.”

In a court brief in which he argued the state government’s point of view, Souter wrote: “The lowering of the flag to commemorate the death of Christ no more establishes a religious position on the part of the state or promotes a religion than the lowering of the flag for the death of Hubert Humphrey promotes the cause of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire.”

In each case, federal courts rejected Souter’s argument on the basis of the “separation of church and state” doctrine.

The Rhode Island case began in June, 1989, when Daniel Weisman took offense at a religious invocation during his daughter’s graduation from a Providence junior high school. A rabbi opened and closed the ceremony with a brief message that began with the words “O God” and ended with “Amen.”

Based on the father’s lawsuit, a federal judge in Providence issued an order prohibiting the “inclusion of prayer” in city school ceremonies. In July, a federal appeals court upheld that decision on a 2-1 vote.

The California courts have been divided on whether public schools may include a religious invocation during a ceremony. Although they relied on the same set of Supreme Court pronouncements, one state appeals court upheld a religious invocation in the Morongo Unified School District in San Bernardino County but another prohibited such an invocation in Livermore. The issue is now pending before the California Supreme Court.

In December, a federal judge ordered Beverly Hills officials to take down a 28-foot Hanukkah menorah that had been placed across the street from City Hall. This ruling was in turn based on a splintered 1989 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited Pittsburgh city officials from erecting a creche in their City Hall but permitted a menorah outside on the street.

In their brief, Bush Administration attorneys said that the court should sweep away the confusion by ruling that the 1st Amendment forbids only “religious coercion” by the government. A school ceremony that invokes the name of God or a public display of religious symbolism is not unconstitutional, they said, because it does not establish “an official church” or compel people “to participate in a religious exercise.”

Last year, the high court sharply revised its approach to the issue of minority religions and government regulation. Before, the more liberal court had said that religious adherents were exempted from laws or government policies that infringed on their “free exercise of religion.” Under the 1990 ruling, the court said that religious practices will not be exempted from general laws.

Meanwhile, in separate cases, the court gave attorneys for the Hare Krishnas and the Church of Scientology another chance--although a slim one--to persuade California courts to throw out multimillion-dollar verdicts won in lawsuits filed by former devotees.

Two weeks ago, the high court said that juries may impose huge punitive damages, so long as state judges make sure that the amounts are in line with the gravity of the offenses.

Following practice, the justices sent back for reconsideration seven pending appeals on punitive damages, including the two highly publicized religion cases from Southern California.

The brief high court order keeps alive legal disputes that date to the late 1970s, an era when nontraditional religions flourished in California and parents feared losing their children to “cults.”

In 1983, a Santa Ana jury handed down a $32.6-million verdict against the Hare Krishnas, who had been accused of brainwashing an Orange County teen-ager and then concealing her whereabouts from her parents.

Three years later, a Los Angeles jury handed down a $30-million verdict against the Scientologists, who were said to have ruined the mental health and financial standing of a former member.

In response to church appeals, state judges reduced the amounts of both verdicts to less than one-tenth the original awards.

Lawyers for the churches said that they had been subjected to “heresy” trials in California, but the justices ignored their religious claims.