First Amendment touchdown!

Church & State, Jul/Aug 2000 by Boston, Rob

Supreme Court Blows The Whistle On SchoolSponsored Prayer At Football Games

School officials in Santa Fe, Texas, have never been too happy with the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions banning official prayer and other religious activities from the classroom.

Although government-sanctioned devotions are unconstitutional, some families in the community say the school district has often sought ways around the high court's rulings-or ignored them completely. Over the years, dissenting parents in this heavily Baptist area have complained about distribution of Bibles, evangelical Christian prayers before events, teachers encouraging children to attend evangelistic revivals and members of minority religions being scorned or ridiculed.

In April of 1995, two families-one Roman Catholic and the other Mormon- decided they had had enough of the sectarian flavor of Santa Fe's public schools. They filed suit in federal court and won a ruling striking down a variety of the practices.

Five years ago, few would have guessed that the court battle in this small southeast Texas community near Houston would take on national implications. But that's exactly what happened June 19 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the case, striking down schoolsponsored prayers before football games.

Thanks to various legal twists and turns, by the time the case reached the high court it dealt with just one issue: the legality of allegedly "student-led" prayers, recited over a loudspeaker, before football games. In declaring the practice unconstitutional, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the school prayer rulings of the early 1960s and handed a stinging rebuff to the Religious Right.

Defenders of separation of church and state say that the high court's 6-3 decision in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe should slam the door on efforts to sneak coercive prayer and religious worship into public schools through the backdoor. But it could also make religion-and-schools an issue in the November elections and re-ignite the Religious Right's drive for a constitutional amendment erasing church-state separation from the First Amendment.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens declared that a scheme enacted by the Santa Fe school board in October 1995 to allow students to elect a classmate to deliver an invocation or other message prior to football games was constitutionally invalid.

"Such a system," insisted Stevens, "encourages divisiveness along religious lines and threatens the imposition of coercion upon those students not desiring to participate in a religious exercise."

Stevens asserted that the policy had a clear religious purpose. District officials, he noted, had tried various dodges to keep official prayer in district schools. The court majority saw the current policy as a ruse for school sponsorship of religion, noting that the "messages" given were always prayers and that the students giving them in past years were formerly called "student chaplains."

Observed Stevens, "The District, nevertheless, asks us to pretend that we do not recognize what every Santa Fe High School student understands clearly-that this policy is about prayer...We refuse to turn a blind eye to the context in which this policy arose, and that context quells any doubt that this policy was implemented with the purpose of endorsing school prayer."

The justice dismissed the claim that the invocations are student free speech, not government establishment of religion. "These invocations," he argued, "are authorized by a government policy and take place on government property at government-sponsored school-related events."

Ironically, it was the district's transparent ploy to make the prayers appear to be "student led" that finally sank the policy. At oral argument March 19, two justices who are regarded as swing voters on church-state matters-Anthony M. Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor-indicated clear discomfort with the idea of students voting on religion.

Stevens echoed that concern, charging that "the majoritarian process implemented by the District guarantees, by definition, that minority candidates will never prevail and that their views will be effectively silenced."

Stevens also criticized the set-up for its cavalier treatment of religious minorities.

"School sponsorship of a religious message is impermissible," he observed, "because it sends the ancillary 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."'

Joining Stevens in the opinion were Kennedy and O'Connor along with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer.

The majority opinion drew an angry dissent from the court's anti-separationist bloc. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist blasted the decision, insisting that it "bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life."

Rehnquist, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, asserted that "Neither the holding nor the tone of the opinion is faithful to the meaning of the [First Amendment], when it is recalled that George Washington himself, at the request of the very Congress which passed the Bill of Rights, proclaimed a day of `public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God."'