Student Prayer Again an Issue for High Court

Public prayer may return to America’s schools this year, thanks to the determined efforts of this small and strongly Baptist town near the Texas Gulf Coast.

No one doubts that a student may pray privately at her desk, or join with friends to pray together at lunchtime. And for at least a decade, students have had the right to meet before class or after school to study the Bible or pray.

But the school board here wants something more: a student leading a prayer at school events, ranging from assemblies and the graduation ceremony to Friday night football games.

Later this month, the school board’s case goes before the Supreme Court, and it could transform the school prayer issue nationwide. If the justices uphold student-led prayers, the decision could clear the way for all schools to put the question of public prayers to a vote of their students.

The Santa Fe school board’s crusade has been joined by Texas Gov. and Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush, who has filed court papers arguing that student-led school event prayer should be legal nationwide. In recent days, the role of religion in public life has emerged as a key point of controversy in the GOP presidential primaries.

For 1st Amendment fans, the Texas prayer case offers a triple delight. The amendment says the government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech.” All three provisions are cited by the Santa Fe school board and its critics.

When pressed by a federal judge for having promoted religion in its schools, the board members opted to have the students vote on whether to give a prayer at school events. By a nearly unanimous vote, prayer won last year at Santa Fe High School.

Christian student leaders and school officials here speak of the moral crisis in the nation and say they want to give a public voice to their personal faith.

“If we’re Christians at church, we should be Christians at school,” said Marian Ward, who was elected last year to lead prayers at Santa Fe High. The 18-year-old daughter of a Baptist minister, she said that her faith requires a “public acknowledgment” of God’s role in her life.

In September, she defied a U.S. appeals court in New Orleans and stepped before the microphone to pray “in Jesus’ name” before the kickoff of the school’s first home football game. Last month, board members nominated her for a “Texas Heroes Award.”

In its filing to the Supreme Court, however, the board denies that it encourages prayer. It says that it follows a “neutral policy” that “neither favors nor disfavors religion.”

If students use the public platform to pray, that’s their choice, school board president John Couch Jr. said. “It’s free speech. We can’t inhibit what they want to say.”

“It’s a clever argument” but basically a sham, replied Galveston lawyer Anthony P. Griffin, who is fighting the school board. It is obvious to all that school officials encourage prayer rather than free speech, he said, declaring that they would not allow students to use the podium to denounce the school board or to mock religion.

The prospect of having students vote on prayer troubles a University of Texas expert on religion and the law. “The core of the 1st Amendment is that we don’t vote on religion in this country and allow the majority to use the instruments of government to spread the faith,” law professor Douglas Laycock said.

But lawyers for Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, whose American Center for Law and Justice will represent the Santa Fe school board before the court, say a student’s prayer at a school event is free speech, not an official promotion of religion.

Bush’s brief goes even further, urging the court to permit student-led prayers nationwide. He also maintains that, once a young person is given a public platform, he or she should be free to ask fellow students to follow Jesus Christ.

Bush’s brief rejects an earlier U.S. appeals court ruling that allowed student-led prayer at graduation as long as it did not include religious proselytizing.

Further demonstrating the issue’s political resonance in Texas, the state Republican Party added a nonbinding measure to the March 14 primary ballot that asks voters to endorse student-led prayers.

For its part, the high court is likely to be divided on the constitutionality of student-led prayers.

A generation ago, during the 1960s and ‘70s, a solid majority of the court espoused the strict separation of church and state. Government could not intrude into the private sphere of religion, nor could religion move into public, tax-funded operations. For example, the court repeatedly struck down state laws that subsidized religious schools and it barred cities from sponsoring Christmas-season depictions of Christ’s birth.

But over the last decade, a more conservative court has shifted away from strict separation and instead espoused a doctrine of neutrality or equal treatment for religion. If a public school district allows private groups to use its auditorium, for instance, church groups must be allowed to use it too. If a state university subsidizes student publications, it must give an equal subsidy to a magazine published for Christian students.

In its legal brief, the Sante Fe school board echoes these recent decisions, stressing free speech for Christian students and the neutral stance of public officials.

While the strict separation of church and state has never been popular in this part of Texas, not everyone in this town of 8,000 is comfortable with the intense focus on Christianity.

The case now before the Supreme Court began with complaints of too much religion, not too little, in the Sante Fe schools.

One mother who volunteered in the elementary schools said she was upset when a teacher led students in prayer before lunch. “You could see some of the Jewish kids felt left out,” said Debbie Mason, an American Baptist.

Another mother, a Catholic, said she did not sign a permission slip for her son to participate in religious singing so he was put outside the classroom for that part of the day.

A third said that her daughter came home from junior high reporting that a teacher had passed out fliers for a Baptist revival. When the girl raised a question about the revivals, the teacher asked about her religion. When the girl said that she was a Mormon, the teacher described Mormonism as a “non-Christian cult.”

School officials promised to prevent the mixing of church and state but failed to do so, according to the parents. They took their complaints to Debora Perkey, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in Houston.

After Perkey failed to win new guidelines from the school board, the ACLU sued the district in 1995 on behalf of two parents who insisted on anonymity to protect their children.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent ultimately ordered the district to adopt new policies prohibiting prayer and religious instruction in class. He said that a student may give a “brief invocation” at graduation and football games, as long as it was “nonsectarian” and “non-proselytizing.”

The school board appealed to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court last year ruled that school officials may not allow students “to read overtly Christian prayers from the stage at graduation ceremonies.” Moreover, the court said, there is no need for prayer and invocation at football games, adding that the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance would suffice.

The school board, joined by the governor, appealed to the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling and to allow students to give an explicitly religious message from the podium.

In an unusual move, the justices granted their appeal but recast the case. In a one-line order, the court said that it would decide “whether [the school board’s] policy permitting student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games violates the Establishment Clause.”

The court set arguments in the case (Santa Fe Independent School District vs. Doe, 99-62) for March 29.

In its last prayer case, the court by a 5-4 vote said in 1992 that public schools cannot invite clerics to deliver invocations at graduation. The justices have not ruled on student-led prayer in public schools.

First Amendment experts believe that the Santa Fe case will be a close one. A narrow ruling could be limited to football games. However, if the justices uphold the constitutionality of student-led prayers, the opinion likely would allow such prayers at graduation and possibly other school events.

Ward became a local celebrity last fall when she led prayers at home games for the Santa Fe Indians. Because of the pending court case against the school system, the school’s principal had urged her to give a generic invocation and “not [to] mention the deity.”

Instead, she and her father, Pastor Bob Ward, contacted a Houston lawyer, who filed suit against the school board. Just minutes before the kickoff of the season’s first football game, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake in Houston said that the principal’s guidelines amounted to “state-sponsored atheism.” His order cleared the way for her explicitly Christian prayer.

What about students who are not Christians or do not wish to be part of a public prayer session?

“In the Constitution, there are no guarantees everyone will be comfortable,” Ward said, her father nodding in agreement.