Supreme Court school-prayer decision a victory for religious liberty
June 20, 2000
Yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Texas case involving prayer at high school football games will have far-reaching implications for Alabama’s own school-prayer case, Chandler v. Siegelman.
In Santa Fe v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruled, 6 to 3, that public schools cannot permit students to lead assembled crowds in prayer before high school football games. The Texas school district had a policy that permitted high school students to elect one of their peers to deliver a “message or invocation” over the loudspeaker before football games. In striking down this policy, the Court held that the Texas prayers were a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because they “coerc[ed] those present to participate in an act of worship.”
ACLU of Alabama Board President Martin McCaffery hailed this decision as a victory for religious freedom. “The ACLU has always stood for the principle that each person should be free to think or believe what he or she wants without governmental interference or coercion. Today’s decision affirms those principles,” McCaffery said.
The Supreme Court rejected the Texas school district’s argument that it was only trying to protect student free speech when it permitted students to offer pre-game invocations. As the Santa Fe Court recognized, when students use public school property at public school events that are controlled by public school officials, the speech is not the student’s but the government’s.
“By rejecting this argument, the court preserved the very important distinction between private voluntary prayer, which is always allowed, and public, school-sponsored prayer, which is not,” stated ACLU of Alabama Cooperating Attorney Pamela L. Sumners. “Public schools should not be in the business of facilitating religious worship, especially when a number of the participants are unwilling.”
Filed in 1996, Alabama’s school-prayer suit challenged a broad range of school-sponsored religious activities in the DeKalb County school system. Like the Texas case, the Alabama school-prayer case involves student-led football game prayers delivered over the school’s loudspeaker, although it also involves challenges to school-sponsored prayers at graduations, school assemblies and in the classrooms.
In October 1997, U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent ordered DeKalb County to cease its school-sponsored religious activities, setting off a firestorm of controversy. Last summer, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals partially reversed Judge DeMent, holding that only prayers led by school officials were unconstitutional and that schools must permit students and others to use public school property at public school events to lead the audiences in prayer.
ACLU of Alabama Cooperating Attorney Elizabeth Hubertz stated: “By ruling as it did today, the Supreme Court has cast doubt on the validity of the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion from last summer because it rejected most of the arguments on which it was based, including the argument that DeKalb County was just being “neutral” toward religion. The ruling in Santa Fe is a true vindication of Judge DeMent’s original decision.”
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