Supreme Court Reinforces Ban on Prayer in Schools

The Supreme Court dealt Christian legal activists a setback Monday when it refused to revive a Mississippi law that allowed students to give prayers at assemblies and over the school intercom.

The court’s action leaves intact the long-standing rule that organized prayers are banned in the public schools, no matter who leads them.

The Supreme Court in 1962 outlawed official prayers in public schools on the grounds they violated the Constitution’s ban on an “establishment of religion.”

The ruling clearly meant neither teachers nor school officials could lead a prayer or invoke God at school events. It did not ban all prayers, since students could pray privately at their desks or meet with like-minded students in a Bible study club before classes began.

But in recent years, Christian legal activists have sought more freedom for “voluntary, student-initiated, student-led prayers” at school events. Lawyers for Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice and the Virginia-based Rutherford Institute argued that student-led prayer at school events should be allowed as a matter of free speech.

Their view got a big boost four years ago when the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas school board’s decision to allow a student to deliver a prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. The Supreme Court refused, without comment, to hear an appeal of that decision in 1993.

Lawyers for the Christian-rights groups then sent letters to school officials nationwide advising them that the Constitution did not bar truly voluntary, student-led prayers.

Counterattacking, lawyers for People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties Union sent their own letters to school officials advising them that students could not be made a “captive audience” for a religious message, regardless of who delivered it.

The issue was put to a test in Jackson, Miss., where a high school student body voted, 490 to 96, to have students deliver a morning prayer over the intercom system. School principal Bishop Knox then started the practice.

In response, school district officials suspended Knox for violating their policies. But the community rose up to support him.

The Mississippi Legislature passed a law saying that “on public school property . . . invocations, benedictions or nonsectarian, nonproselytizing student-initiated voluntary prayer shall be permitted during compulsory or noncompulsory school-related assemblies, sporting events, graduation . . . and other school-related student events.”

David Ingrebretsen, executive director of the state ACLU, challenged the law on behalf of his daughter and 14 other people. A federal judge in Jackson blocked the law from taking effect, and in January, the U.S. 5th Circuit of Appeals--the same court that had upheld the Texas graduation prayer--ruled, by a 9-6 vote, that the law was unconstitutional.

Appealing to the Supreme Court, state Atty. Gen. Mike Moore said the law does not “direct, coerce or compel students to initiate any prayer. . . . This is left to private choice.”

But the high court rejected the appeal, without comment, in Moore vs. Ingrebretsen, 96-331.