High Court Bars Student Prayers at School Events

The Supreme Court on Monday soundly rejected student-led prayers in the public schools, insisting again that the Constitution demands a strict separation of church and state.

Students may pray privately on their own or with friends before, during or after school, the justices said. But school officials cross the line when they sponsor a group prayer or encourage a student to deliver a religious message at a school event.

Monday’s 6-3 ruling struck down a Texas school board’s policy of allowing students to decide, by majority vote, whether to have a student-led “invocation” at football games, graduations and other school gatherings.

The decision halts a movement by Christian legal activists to convert the school prayer issue into one of free speech for students.

Across the country, and particularly in the South, public schools increasingly have allowed students to give invocations and prayers at graduations and other ceremonies.

This practice differs from the official prayers that have been outlawed since 1962, they argued, because the words come from the students, not adult school employees.

Polls show that most Americans support a return to prayer in school. As if to highlight the point, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, filed a brief supporting the Texas school board and arguing that students had a free-speech right to voice their religious beliefs.

But the Supreme Court has refused to budge on the issue of school prayer, and it rejected student-led invocations Monday in a surprisingly broad opinion.

Not everyone favors Christian prayer, and school officials have no business favoring it either, the justices said.

“The religious liberty protected by the Constitution is abridged when the state affirmatively sponsors the particular religious practice of prayer,” Justice John Paul Stevens said.

At school-sponsored events, student-led prayers amount to the public promotion of religion, not a private act of worship, Stevens added in Santa Fe Independent School District vs. Doe, 99-62.

Bush said he was disappointed in the outcome. “I thought voluntary, student-led prayer at extracurricular events was right,” he said after a campaign event in Vancouver, Wash.

The case decided Monday came from Santa Fe, Texas, a small and strongly Baptist community along the Gulf Coast.

Its school board insisted that students should have the right to decide whether prayers would be delivered at its high school football games.

Last year, the daughter of a local Baptist minister was elected to deliver the invocation, and she prayed “in the name of Jesus” over the microphone before each home game.

In his brief defending the school policy, Bush maintained that as long as officials did not give the prayers or dictate what was said, students should be free to speak about the Christian faith.

Critics responded that Christian students would have an unfair advantage over Jews, Muslims and non-Christians, particularly in small Southern towns, if the majority decided the religious message.

Bush’s brief disputed this view and said that the court should “focus on the rights of the speakers, not of the listener. Constitutionally speaking, the majority view is just as valid as the minority view.”

The high court disagreed strongly on Monday. The Constitution does not allow public schools to take sides on matters of religion and put some students “at the mercy of the majority,” it said.

“School sponsorship of a religious message is impermissible,” Stevens added, because it sends the “message to members of the audience who are nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.”

Moreover, schools have no business holding elections on matters of religion, he said, adding that this would only “encourage divisiveness along religious lines.”

In 1962, the court first outlawed official prayers at schools as a violation of the 1st Amendment’s ban on laws respecting “an establishment of religion.”

During the 1980s, Presidents Reagan and Bush pledged to restore school prayer and sent five new justices to the high court. But in 1992, when the issue returned, the court on a 5-4 vote barred clerics from delivering religious messages at graduation ceremonies. The majority included two Reagan appointees--Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy--and Bush’s first appointee, Justice David H. Souter.

Monday’s opinion rejecting student-led prayers was signed by Justices O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter, along with President Clinton’s two appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

In a sharp dissent, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said the ruling “bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life.” He said that in his view, the government need not be “completely neutral” toward religion.

Citing the school board’s written rationale for student-led prayer at football games--”to solemnize the event, to promote good sportsmanship and student safety, and to establish the appropriate environment for the competition”--Rehnquist said, “the policy itself has secular purposes” to which the court should defer.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas said they agreed.

Reactions to the ruling split along party lines.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas condemned the ruling as reflecting a “growing bias against even the presence of religion in public life.” The vast majority of Americans support voluntary school prayer, he said.

A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore said that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee approved of the ruling. “He feels . . . in this case that the prayer was found to be government-sponsored and participation was not truly voluntary,” said Douglas Hattaway, a campaign spokesman.

As if to emphasize its message Monday, the high court also rejected a Louisiana school board’s plan to warn students that the teaching of evolution should not influence them to reject “the biblical version of creation.”

Since the famous “Monkey trial” of 1925, the teaching of evolution has remained a recurring controversy. In 1968, the court struck down an Arkansas law that barred the teaching of evolution.

In 1987, the court, over dissents by Rehnquist and Scalia, also rejected Louisiana’s plan to give equal teaching time to evolution and “creation science.”

Six years ago, the school board in Tangipahoa Parish, La., adopted a type of warning label. It proposed to tell students that its teaching of evolution in science class was not intended to dissuade them from believing in the Bible’s story of creation.

But a judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down this policy for being based on religion. The high court refused to hear its appeal Monday, despite dissents by Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas. (Tangipahoa Parish vs. Freiler, 99-1625.)

“Today we permit a Court of Appeals to push the much-beloved secular legend of the Monkey Trial one step further,” Scalia complained. “We stand by in silence while [judges] bar a school district from even suggesting to students that other theories besides evolution--including, but not limited to, the biblical theory of creation--are worthy of their consideration.”

Until Monday, Christian legal advocates had been winning converts to the view that voluntary prayer by students was a matter of freedom of speech.

Courts in Alabama and Texas had upheld student-led invocations at graduation ceremonies. Some judges said the government could not “censor” students who wished to speak of their religious faith.

Moreover, the Supreme Court itself had said high school students could meet on campus for Bible study or prayer, so long as participation was entirely voluntary.

But in Santa Fe, it was clear that school board leaders were determined to have Christian prayers spoken at events, regardless of whether everyone wanted to participate.

Two parents, one a Catholic and one a Mormon, sued the district for repeatedly injecting religion into school events. They said Gideon Bibles were passed out in the school.

When the case went to trial, the school board adopted a new policy for “prayer at football games” and graduation. It said the students by secret ballot could decide whether to have prayers and could elect someone to deliver them.

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, the board had hired the counsel for the Christian Coalition’s legal arm to represent it. He argued that the school board had no official policy on religion and simply allowed students to make a free choice.

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Times staff writer Megan Garvey in Vancouver, Wash., contributed to this story.

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Rulings on School Religion

Over the last 54 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has rendered 11 rulings on the role of religion in public schools.

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1948: McCollum vs. Board of Education: In an 8-1 decision, the court declared unconstitutional a program in Champaign, Ill., that allowed students to attend sectarian religious instruction from clergy and others outside the classroom but on public school grounds.

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1952: Zorach vs. Clauson: The court, by a 6-3 vote, upheld a program in New York City that allowed students to leave school grounds during the school day to attend religious classes.

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1962: Engel vs. Vitale: In a 6-1 decision, the court decided that state-sponsored recitation of the “Regent’s Prayer”--a prayer written by the New York Board of Regents--by students enrolled at the New Hyde Park, N.Y., School District was unconstitutional.

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1963: Abington Township School District vs. Schempp: By a 7-1 vote, the court struck down laws in Pennsylvania and Maryland that required public school students to recite the Lord’s Prayer and read Bible passages every day.

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1968: Epperson vs. Arkansas: The court unanimously struck down an Arkansas law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public universities and secondary schools.

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1980: Stone vs. Graham: With two justices dissenting, the court declared unconstitutional a Kentucky law requiring public schools to post privately funded copies of the Ten Commandments in each classroom.

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1985: Wallace vs. Jaffree: The court voted, 6 to 3, to strike down an Alabama law requiring public schools to set aside a moment of silence for meditation or prayer.

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1987: Edwards vs. Aguillard: A 7-2 decision invalidated a Louisiana law requiring public schools to offer “balanced treatment” between evolution and creationism.

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1990: Board of Education of Westside Community Schools vs. Mergens: The court by an 8-1 vote upheld a federal law requiring public secondary schools to allow student-led religious clubs to meet on campus if other extracurricular clubs are allowed to meet.

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1992: Lee vs. Weisman: The court ruled, 5 to 4, that public schools may not sponsor invocations at graduation ceremonies.

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June 19, 2000: Santa Fe Independent School District vs. Doe: By a 6-3 vote, the court barred officials from letting students lead stadium crowds in prayer before football games.

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Sources: Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute

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