June 26, 2000
Schools can't run pre-game prayers
___By Kenny Byrd
___Associated Baptist Press
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--Opening high school football games with prayer violates the separation of church and state, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 19.
___While not banning all prayers at public schools, the court ruled 6-3 that a Texas school district's policy of allowing a student elected by a majority of classmates to deliver aninvocation over the public-address system before home football games is unconstitutional.
SANTA FE school board members Denise Cowart (left) and Robin Clayton (right) join John Couch as he bows his head thinking about the Supreme Court's decision on school sponsored prayer during a press conference in Santa Fe, June 19. (REUTERS)
___The policy of the Santa Fe Independent School District in Galveston County amounts to state-sponsorship of prayer, which violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, the justices decided.
___The First Amendment forbids government from passing laws that either establish religion or prevent its free exercise. The school district argued the student-led prayers were protected as private speech.
___Writing for the majority, however, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens said electing a student under a policy set up by the school district to encourage prayer "is not properly characterized as private speech."
___Joined in the opinion by Associate Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Steven Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor, Stevens said the policy violates the rights of students who do not wish to pray.
___The Constitution does not ban all religious activities in public schools, however, Stevens said.
___"Nothing in the Constitution as interpreted by this court prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during or after the school day. But the religious liberty protected by the Constitution is abridged when the state affirmatively sponsors the particular practice of prayer," he said.
___The Santa Fe school board adopted the prayer policy in 1995. It allows students selected by their colleagues to deliver invocations and benedictions at graduation ceremonies and a "brief invocation and/or message" during pre-game ceremonies at home varsity football games.
___An anonymous group of Mormon and Catholic students and their parents challenged the policy in court.
___Previous court rulings have said that while an outside clergyman cannot deliver graduation prayers, the Constitution permits student-led prayers as long as they are "non-sectarian" and "non-proselytizing."
___The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the part of the Santa Fe policy governing graduation prayers but said it cannot be extended to football games.
___In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court said football games differ from graduation ceremonies in that they are "hardly the sober type of annual event that can be appropriately solemnized with prayer."
___The Supreme Court ruling addressed only the issue of prayers at athletic events, but criticism of the procedure for selecting students to lead public prayers could spill over into other cases where policies allowing graduation prayers are in question.
___The majority election of a student to pray "does nothing to protect the minority," Stevens said.
___And while the school district tried to craft a policy that passed constitutional muster, he said, its intent was clearly to continue its tradition of opening football games with 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," Stevens wrote.
___Chief Justice William Rehnquist filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
___Rehnquist said the tone of the majority opinion "bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life."
___"Although the Court apparently believes that solemnizing football games is an illegitimate purpose, the voters in the school district seem to disagree," Rehnquist also opined. "Nothing in the Establishment Clause prevents them from making this choice."
___Religious and civil liberties groups on both sides of the case reacted quickly to the first ruling on school prayer in nearly a decade.
___Melissa Rogers, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, said the decision "reaffirmed that prayer is none of the government's business."
___The BJC, along with Baylor University's J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies and the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, filed a friend-of-the-court brief against the Texas prayer policy.
___Rogers said students may still pray at football games by gathering voluntarily in huddles or by praying during a neutral moment of silence. "The thing students can't do is insist that government facilitate and endorse prayers."
___Rogers said religious liberties "aren't up for a vote." She said a majority in a small Texas town would not likely elect a Muslim to pray at the games. "The First Amendment doesn't say 'freedom for me, but not for thee.' It protects the Muslim as much as the Methodist," she said.
___Derek Davis, director of the J.M. Dawson Institute, said the ruling "champions historic Baptist principles of religious liberty."
___The Santa Fe community is "a very Baptist community, but historically Baptists have been a minority and have understood the problems of being a minority," said Davis, who wrote the BJC brief. "It was disappointing to me that a Baptist majority in Santa Fe had forgotten those principles."
___Richard Land, executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the court's ruling.
___While Land said he disagreed with the court, the agency did not file a brief on either side of the dispute because of concerns "about the less-than-ideal provision to ensure the opportunity for a more diverse student expression."
___The district went out of its way to meet constitutional guidelines, but the "only chink" was that "they did not provide adequately for minority expression," Land said. However, Land said he does not believe the Santa Fe policy should have been overturned.
___Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, strongly criticized the ruling.
___Sekulow, who presented oral arguments in favor of the Texas school district's policy, said the opinion "blurs the distinction between government speech and private speech."
___"It is the free speech of the students that has been censored," Sekulow said.
___The ruling also was criticized by Dal Shealy, president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, based in Kansas City, Mo. He called the ruling a "bizarre and ironic intrusion in the religious life and expression of America's student athletes."
___Texas Congressman Dick Armey also issued a strongly worded critique of the court decision.
___"This decision is inconsistent with the plain language of the First Amendment, its history and the views of our nation's founders," Armey said. "This disregard for people of faith is unwarranted. How on earth can it be unconstitutional to let children pray before a football game?"
___Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, generally considered an advocate of conservative Christian causes, used his June 22 column to urge conservative Christians to put more emphasis on living out their faith rather than seeking to impose public prayers on others.
___"The greater power to do good lies within individuals, not the state," Thomas wrote. "Conservative Christians in particular are fooling themselves when they think public prayers are a sign that all must be right with the world."
___Such prayers "trivialize the act of prayer," Thomas said, quoting Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees who sought public attention by their well-timed prayers.
___Likewise, the director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission urged Texas Baptists to "get down to some genuine praying" rather than relying on ceremonial government-sanctioned religious exercises.
___"The decision is about government-sponsored prayer, not about private prayer," said Phil Strickland. "The court said that in the public school setting, government should never endorse, facilitate or sponsor prayers. Someone's religious liberty is always violated.
___"The only thing we have lost here is the government being able to lead us in prayer, and I for one have never been too excited about the government being able to tell us when and what we have to pray. Giving government a proxy to pray for us has never been a good idea."
___Instead of depending on government-sponsored religious exercises, Strickland encouraged Christians to "get down to some genuine praying. Let's get groups together before the game, below the stands or on the parking lot and pray. Meet at halftime and pray. How about a tailgate prayer session after the game?
___"I challenge Texas Baptists to use this in a positive way, to move us on to serious prayer. If we want prayer at football games, the government is not going to do it for us. But we can do it individually and in groups in numerous ways. Let's use that opportunity."
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