N.C. Public school cancels religious rally after AU protest

Seventeen-year-old Marian Lynn Ward filed suit, saying the school was violating her free-speech rights. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake agreed, and issued an order, effective for 10 days, forbidding the school from punishing any student who led prayer. By forbidding prayers, Lake wrote, the school had "clearly preferred atheism over any religious faith."

Advocates of school-sponsored prayer in California are working to collect 600,000 signatures on petitions to win a spot on the November 2000 ballot for an initiative called the "Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance in Public Schools" measure. The initiative would amend the state constitution to require public schools to reserve at least one minute at the beginning of the day for "voluntary" prayer and would also mandate that the pledge be recited daily.

The measure's primary backer is Carl Towe, a political consultant. Towe insists that the project is necessary because some public schools have been denying students the right to prayer. "This has nothing to do with the separation of church and state," he said. "This is more [about] religious freedom and discrimination."

Observers note that even if the amendment gets enough signatures and wins a majority vote, it would still face a court challenge and would likely be found unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court declared mandatory prayer in public schools unconstitutional in 1962.

School prayer boosters are active in New Jersey, too, where Bea Cerkez, former mayor of Deptford, is circulating petitions to change New Jersey law to allow vocal, mandatory prayer in schools. Cerkez, who claims to have collected 10,000 signatures so far, seems undaunted that her proposal is blatantly unconstitutional. "I don't agree with the [school prayer decision] as it reads," she told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "[Required prayer] should never have been taken out of schools, and the thousands of us will be able to put it back in."

A handful of state legislators have endorsed Cerkez's crusade.