Raymond L. Marsh; Judge Barred Prayer at School

Raymond L. Marsh, 73, a retired Alameda County Superior Court judge who attracted national attention when he banned prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. That ruling, issued in 1983, agreed with senior student Leslie Ann Bennett’s argument that the invocation prayer at Livermore’s Granada High School violated the constitutionally mandated separation between church and state. Granada’s graduation ceremony was a tense affair with security guards checking bags and purses after school officials said they received threats to disrupt the ceremony. Born in Omaha, Marsh earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA, served in the Army during World War II, and earned his law degree in 1951 at the University of California’s Boalt Hall School of Law. As a young lawyer, Marsh took civil rights and civil liberties cases, often pro bono. He traveled to the South to defend African Americans fighting racial injustice and defended Bay Area longshoremen called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Appointed to the bench by Gov. Jerry Brown, Marsh worked as part of Alameda County’s Alternative Dispute Resolution process after his retirement in 1996. On Thursday of cancer at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley.