June 20, 2000
Student Prayers Must Be Private, Court Reaffirms
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
ASHINGTON, June 19 -- Strongly reaffirming its earlier decisions
against officially sponsored prayer
in public schools, the Supreme Court
ruled today that prayers led by students at high school football games
are no exception: as officially sanctioned acts at events that students
feel great social pressure to attend,
they are unconstitutional.
The 6-to-3 majority opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens said that even
when attendance was voluntary and
when the decision to pray was made
by students, "the delivery of a pregame prayer has the improper effect
of coercing those present to participate in an act of religious worship."
The case came from a small
school district in South Texas, typical of communities across the South
where the practice of prayer at graduations, assemblies and athletic contests has persisted as officials have
tried to navigate the obstacle course
created by Supreme Court and lower
court decisions.
In this case, the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, had ruled that
students could offer prayers at graduations -- where members of the
clergy cannot, under a 1992 Supreme
Court decision -- but not in the "far
less solemn and extraordinary" setting of a football game.
The decision today did not explicitly address graduation ceremonies,
but the majority's analysis cast serious doubt on the increasingly popular practice of student-led graduation prayers. The justices have been
asked to hear a challenge to an Alabama law, upheld last year by a
federal appeals court, that permits
"student-initiated voluntary prayer"
at graduations as well as other
events.
While the decision today was not a
surprise, given the justices' evident
skepticism about the Santa Fe Independent School District's prayer policy when the case was argued in
March, it was nonetheless notable in
several respects. One was the majority's firm rejection of the school district's central argument in defense
of its policy: the prayers were private student speech that could not be
attributed to the school district itself
and could not be considered an unconstitutional "establishment" of religion in violation of the First
Amendment.
Indeed, the district had argued, to
hold that students could not express
their religious views would create a
separate First Amendment problem,
amounting to the censorship of religious speech in a public forum.
But this was not private speech,
and a football game was not a public
forum for unbridled free expression,
Justice Stevens said. "These invocations are authorized by a government policy and take place on government property at government-sponsored school-related events," he
said, adding that any member of the
audience would perceive the student
prayer as stamped with the school's
"seal of approval."
Justice Stevens added: "Contrary
to the district's repeated assertions
that it has adopted a 'hands-off' approach to the pregame invocation,
the realities of the situation plainly
reveal that its policy involves both
perceived and actual endorsement of
religion."
He noted that in contrast to a public forum, in which contrasting views
are welcome, the Santa Fe policy
"allows only one student, the same
student for the entire season, to give
the invocation." He said the policy
clearly indicated, without saying so
explicitly, that what was expected
was a religious message, "suggesting that a solemn, yet nonreligious,
message, such as commentary on
United States foreign policy, would
be prohibited."
In an acerbic dissenting opinion,
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist
said the majority opinion "bristles
with hostility to all things religious in
public life."
Chief Justice Rehnquist said that
"neither the holding nor the tone of
the opinion is faithful to the meaning
of the Establishment Clause," at
least as understood by George Washington, who proclaimed a day of
"public thanksgiving and prayer" at
the request of "the very Congress
which passed the Bill of Rights."
The chief justice said the majority
was adopting so rigid a view of
church-state separation that "under
the Court's logic, a public school that
sponsors the singing of the national
anthem before football games violates the Establishment Clause" because the concluding verse contains
the phrase "And this be our motto:
'In God is our trust.' "
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined the chief justice's dissenting opinion. The majority opinion was joined by Justices
Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M.
Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth
Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G.
Breyer.
Justice Stevens appeared to go out
of his way to refute the dissenters'
accusation that the majority was
hostile to religion. "By no means," he
said, did the Constitution "impose a
prohibition on all religious activity in
our public schools" or stop "any public school student from voluntarily
praying at any time before, during,
or after the school day." He added:
"But the religious liberty protected
by the Constitution is abridged when
the state affirmatively sponsors the
particular practice of prayer."
The case, Santa Fe Independent
School District v. Doe, No. 99-62, began in 1995 when two families, one
Mormon and the other Catholic, sued
to stop a variety of religious practices in the 4,000-student district near
Galveston, Tex. Permitted by the
Federal District Court to proceed
anonymously because of the possibility of harassment, the plaintiffs won
an initial ruling that prompted several changes in the school district's
policy as the litigation continued.
The dissenting justices objected
today that the majority lacked a basis for striking down the policy,
which had never taken effect, on its
face, but should let it take effect and
see if any problems developed. But
the majority declared firmly that
there was no need to wait. In fact,
Justice Stevens said, the election system itself was part of the constitutional problem "because it establishes an improper majoritarian election
on religion" and "encourages divisiveness along religious lines."
Also notable was the majority's
rejection of the school district's effort to describe the policy as a "content-neutral" effort to provide a solemn atmosphere at football games.
"We refuse to turn a blind eye to the
context in which this policy arises,"
Justice Stevens said, "and that context quells any doubt that this policy
was implemented with the purpose
of endorsing school prayer."
Gov. George W. Bush of Texas,
who signed the state's brief in support of the school district, called the
ruling "disappointing." In a statement put out by his office in Austin,
Mr. Bush said: "I support the constitutionally guaranteed right of all students to express their faith freely
and participate in voluntary, student-led prayer."
Julie Underwood, general counsel
of the National School Boards Association, praised the decision and said
she would advise school districts that
they should now regard student-led
graduation prayers as unconstitutional as well. "This decision emphasizes that we don't have prayer at
school sponsored events, period,"
she said in an interview, adding:
"Children shouldn't be made to feel
excluded or coerced."
