November 24, 1999
Supreme Court will hear
Texas case on football prayer
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___WASHINGTON--The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the case of a Texas school district's quest to maintain its tradition of offering prayers over the public-address system at high school football games.
___This is the first case concerning school prayer the court has agreed to hear since it struck down clergy-led prayers at commencement exercises in 1992.
___At issue is the practice of the Sante Fe Independent School District near Galveston. The district's policy of permitting student-led prayers at high school football games was ruled unconstitutional by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year.
___"I am pleased the Supreme Court has agreed to take up the Santa Fe case because the 5th Circuit has left the whole matter in confusion, ruling student-led prayer OK in graduations and not OK in the case of football games," said Weston Ware, director of citizenship education with the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission.
___Advocates on both sides of the controversial matter expressed thankfulness that the court agreed to hear the case and possibly offer a definitive ruling.
___"The Supreme Court should use this opportunity to say that when the school turns over the public-address system in a school stadium during a school event for an invocation, the prayer is sponsored by the school and thus violates the Constitution," said Melissa Rogers, general counsel at the Baptist Joint Committee.
___"This is a pure free-speech case," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice and an advocate for student-led prayers at school sporting events. The court's acceptance of the case "clearly puts the issue of student-led and student-initiated prayer squarely before the Supreme Court."
___"This is a critical free-speech case that has national implications in every school district in America," Sekulow said.
___In 1995, the Santa Fe district adopted policies permitting students selected by their colleagues to deliver invocations and benedictions at commencement exercises and to deliver a "brief invocation and/or message" during pre-game ceremonies at home varsity football games.
___When the matter was challenged in court, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a district court that graduation prayers must be "non-sectarian" and "non-proselytizing" to be constitutional.
___Even with those safeguards, however, the appeals court said prayers at football games should not be allowed. Football games differ from a graduation ceremony in that they are "hardly the sober type of annual event that can be appropriately solemnized with prayer," the appeals court said.
___The Supreme Court's review of the case is limited to the question of whether the Santa Fe district's policy on prayers at football games violates the separation of church and state.
___That is a question that continues to divide the religious community.
___"Prayer is not something school boards or administrations ought to be deciding on by some kind of majority rule voting," Ware said. "Neither should officials pass that opportunity to students, who should not be voting on prayer.
___"The Equal Access Law of 1984 gives students the full rights of religious expression in voluntary groups where all participants are in attendance because of personal choices," he added. "On the other hand, in cases of government sponsored events--graduations, school classrooms, school events for all students like football games--in those cases neither school officials, nor students voting, should set up situations in which any person's religious sensibilities are offended."
___Not so, say others such as Sekulow, who argue squelching student-led prayers at school events amounts to denial of those students' free-speech rights.
___No date has been set for oral arguments in the case, but a ruling is expected before the end of the term next summer.
___
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