Supreme Court Will Rule on Student Prayers

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will rule this term on whether students can be permitted to give Christian prayers at public school events ranging from football games to graduation ceremonies.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, urged the justices in a friend-of-the-court brief to give students the freedom to deliver explicitly religious prayers.

The Constitution requires school officials to be “neutral toward religion,” Bush’s brief says, but students need not be constrained by the same principle.

Rather, they should be free “to determine what message if any to deliver,” even if it is to “passionately advocate that Jesus Christ should take the central role in a person’s life.”

The case of a Galveston, Texas-area high school, to be heard in February, gives the Supreme Court its first chance to rule directly on student-led prayers.

In the 1960s, the court outlawed official prayers and Bible readings in public schools as a violation of the Constitution’s rule on separation of church and state. The 1st Amendment bans any law “respecting the establishment of religion.”

During the 1990s, however, religious-rights advocates have recast the school prayer issue as one of free speech for students.

This movement began in Texas and has spread to much of the nation.

At first, students sought to meet in groups before or after school to pray and read the Bible. Judges upheld these student-initiated prayer meetings because they were essentially private and voluntary.

Later, students asked to include a brief religious message in graduation ceremonies or at sporting events. At some schools, seniors voted on whether to include a religious message in their graduation ceremony.

In 1992, the U.S. court of appeals in Texas became the first to uphold these student-led invocations or benedictions, but only on the condition that the religious messages were “nonsectarian and non-proselytizing.”

Following this ruling, the Santa Fe Independent School District near Galveston said students could deliver religious invocations at graduation and over the public address system at football games. Its policy did not limit them to “nonsectarian and non-proselytizing” messages.

Nonetheless, many students simply began their prayers with phrases such as “Dear Heavenly Father” or closed with, “In Jesus’ name we pray.”

At one 1994 graduation, however, a student closed his benediction with an exhortation to his fellow graduates: “Now, each of us must stand on the solid rock of Jesus Christ.”

Two students, known only as “Jane Does,” challenged this policy in federal court as a violation of the separation of church and state. One of the students, who is a Mormon, said she was mocked in class by a history teacher who was urging the children to attend a Baptist religious revival. Her faith was derided by the teacher as “cult-like” and “evil,” according to the lower court. Siding with the dissenting students, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the school district had gone too far.

These “overtly Christian prayers” carry the danger of “polarizing and politicizing an event intended to celebrate the students’ academic achievements,” wrote Judge Jacques Wiener for a 9-7 majority on the appeals court. The ruling also rejected student-led prayers over the public address system at football games.

In its appeal, the school district said it should not have to “censor the religious content from student speech.” Bush, speaking for the state of Texas, filed a brief supporting the school district and was joined by the states of Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and Tennessee.

On the other side, the dissenting students said they should not be made to feel like outsiders in their own community. The pressure for “religious conformity” can be intense for young students, they said.

In recent years, the high court has been closely split on religious issues.

In the last ruling on school prayer, the court on a 5-4 vote in 1992 ruled that schools may not invite clerics to deliver prayers at graduation ceremonies.

In that case, Lee vs. Weisman, Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor joined the liberal justices to strike down the use of clerics at school events. But in a more recent case, they joined the court’s conservatives to uphold the free-speech rights of Christian students who were seeking subsidies for their magazine at a state university.

They will probably cast the deciding votes in the new case, Santa Fe Independent School District vs. Doe, 99-62.

In other actions, the court:

* Agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to the reach of the federal anti-arson law. At issue is whether fires at private homes are covered by the federal law. The court has been skeptical of federal criminal laws that overlap with state laws, especially when there is no link to interstate commerce. (Jones vs. U.S. 99-5739)

* Refused to intervene in a visitation dispute involving a lesbian couple. The Massachusetts court, relying on state law, ruled that a partner who helped raise a child should have temporary visitation rights, even after the two split up. The high court’s refusal to hear the mother’s appeal is not a ruling and sets no precedent. (L.M.M. vs. E.N.O., 99-531)

* Refused again to reconsider major league baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws. Minnesota state lawyers said baseball owners conspired to “extort” money from the taxpayers to fund a new stadium or lose their team. The high court, which first gave baseball its exemption in 1922, apparently is waiting for Congress to reconsider the matter. (Hatch vs. Minnesota Twins, 99-414)

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