Firm and Necessary Line

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday drew a welcome line against the insertion of religion into public schools. The court’s clarity in two closely watched cases, underscored by nearly 40 years of precedent, should help settle this divisive church-and-state issue.

In a Texas case, the court used unequivocal language to hold that students cannot lead stadium crowds in prayer before high school football games. In another case, this one from Louisiana, the court struck down a policy that required elementary and high school teachers to read a disclaimer before teaching evolution.

A string of rulings going back to 1962 has barred public school teachers and administrators from leading prayers or encouraging students to pray during daily moments of silence. In response, schools in Texas and other states have allowed if not encouraged students to lead prayers at official school events. With its decision Monday, the court now has definitively and appropriately ended this practice.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the 6-3 majority, saying the students’ Christian prayers send a “message to members of the audience who are not adherents that they are outsiders.” For many students, he wrote, “the choice between whether to attend these games or to risk facing a personally offensive religious ritual is in no practical sense an easy one. The Constitution, moreover, demands that the school may not force this difficult choice upon these students.”

The case arose from a decision by the Galveston County, Texas, school district to let students elect a representative--originally called a chaplain--to deliver to the crowd “a message or invocation” at home football games. Two families had challenged the policy as a violation of the 1st Amendment.

The court’s separate action in the Louisiana case draws the same bright line on the establishment of religion. Without comment the court rejected an appeal by the Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, which made public school teachers tell their students that the “scientific theory of evolution . . . was not intended to influence or dissuade the biblical theory of creation.” In 1987 the high court overturned an earlier Louisiana law barring the teaching of evolution unless creation too was taught. Monday’s decision is a strong signal to the Kansas Board of Education that its decision last year relegating evolution to “a theory,” on the same plane as creation, is as unconstitutional as it is unscientific.