ACLU Mails Warnings on Prayer at Grad Ceremonies

The American Civil Liberties Union said it has sent a letter to 15,000 public school superintendents warning that the law forbids student-sponsored prayer at graduation ceremonies.

The letter, mailed at the end of April, seeks to rebut the claim by evangelist Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice that prayer at graduation ceremonies is legal if sanctioned by a student vote.

Robertson’s group has also vowed to dispatch what it calls “SWAT teams” to communities around the country to tell school and government officials that “student-initiated prayer” is a constitutionally protected right.

Ira Glasser, executive director of the civil liberties group, is unimpressed. “In his zeal to force all Americans to follow his beliefs, Pat Robertson is seriously distorting the law and sending a dangerous message to the nation’s students and educators,” Glasser said.

Officials of ACLU affiliates around the country have reported numerous complaints from students and their parents about planned prayers during graduation ceremonies, Glasser said.

Last year, in the Lee vs. Weisman case, the Supreme Court ruled that religious exercises at public school graduation ceremonies violate the Constitution.

In the decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court that such prayers give any objecting student “a reasonable perception that she is being forced by the state to pray in a manner her conscience will not allow.”

The Robertson legal group, in its letters to school and government officials, says that a subsequent ruling by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals created a loophole in the Supreme Court ruling. The circuit court upheld a Texas school district’s policy of allowing students to vote in favor of prayer.

But the civil liberties union said the lower court ruling in Jones vs. Clear Creek Independent School District was wrongly decided.

In its letter, the union said that among other fundamental errors in the ruling, the Jones decision unconstitutionally permits a student election to decide whether there will be a prayer at graduation and allows school officials to approve the prayer and designate a time for it during the official ceremonies.

“Constitutional rights would be meaningless if they could be overruled by a vote,” said Robert Peck, legislative counsel in the union’s Washington office.

In its letter, the civil liberties group made it clear that students and their parents can organize prayer ceremonies before or after graduation programs but that such ceremonies must be held off school grounds, attendance must be entirely voluntary and schools officials may not assist in organizing such events or participate in them in their official capacity.

“Turning down a request from students to designate a time for prayer during graduation does not prevent those who wish to pray from doing so,” the letter said. “It merely indicates that they must do it on their own and not use the machinery of government for that purpose.”