Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 6, 1993 TAG: 9306060159
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Supreme Court waited just long enough last year to avoid derailing public school graduation plans.
It was June 24, 1992 - a couple of weeks after most high school graduations - that the court announced its decision in the case known as "Lee vs. Weisman."
In a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled that the prayers a rabbi offered at a 1989 Rhode Island middle-school graduation violated the constitutional prohibition against the establishment of religion.
School administrators have had a year to try to figure out just what the ruling means. Yet, as baccalaureate and graduation exercises roll around again beginning this weekend, students, administrators and school boards are as confused as ever.
Earlier this spring, school boards around the country began receiving unsolicited advice on the permissibility of baccalaureate services and prayers at graduation.
The American Center for Law and Justice - founded by Virginia Beach television evangelist Pat Robertson - wrote first. It said students "have a right to include an invocation and benediction in their graduation exercises."
The Supreme Court decision relates to specific, limited conditions when prayer is unacceptable, the center said. Besides, you can't violate a student's right to free speech just because he or she wants to talk to God.
The American Civil Liberties Union countered with its own letter that said the decision means no prayers of any kind are allowed at high school graduations and that the ACLU "will monitor graduation ceremonies throughout Virginia."
"We urge you not to look for a loophole in this decision in order to slip prayers into graduation ceremonies," the Virginia ACLU wrote. Besides, "there is no need for even the most ardent practitioners of their faith to seek prayers at school-sponsored functions."
Groups on both sides of the graduation prayer issue seem to agree - in the main, anyway - about baccalaureate services.
As long as specifically religious ceremonies are purely voluntary and not sponsored or organized by the school, no problem.
Although some public school divisions in Western Virginia gave up baccalaureate services years ago, most continue to recognize them - though some are no longer religious ceremonies.
This year, however, a few school districts have gone to new lengths to distance themselves from the services.
In Botetourt County, baccalaureate services will be held in churches, rather than in the county's two high schools as they have been in the past.
In Christiansburg, baccalaureate will still be held in the high school, but that facility will be rented by the local ministerial association, which is sponsoring the event.
"We tried to distance the school from the process completely," said the Rev. Chuck McHose, president of the ministers' group. "All we really need the school for is to have a great big room."
No church in the community is large enough to accommodate the 600 to 700 expected for the service, he said.
The decision to have the ministers' association sponsor baccalaureate was not a defiant one, McHose said, but a graceful way to satisfy the community's desire for the service.
In a way, the new arrangement is an improvement, he said, since the program can be explicitly religious - in this case, non-denominational Christian - and not a watered-down "inspirational . . . pep talk."
But the issue of invoking God's blessings on a graduation ceremony and seeking the deity's continued good graces on the new graduates as they leave remains messy.
Each side picks out bits and pieces of the lengthy Lee vs. Weisman decision and uses those parts to defend its position.
The ACLU and some other groups that promote a rigid wall of separation between church and state argue that the Supreme Court decision effectively prohibits prayers at a graduation ceremony.
They say the court ruled that all graduation prayers, including nonsectarian ones, coerce others illegally to participate in a religious exercise; that even if graduation is technically an optional event, societal and peer pressures force students to participate; that a student speaker is prohibited from praying just as an invited minister would be; and that even if a majority of students wants prayers, it can't have them.
Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia ACLU, said Friday his organization concedes that prayer may be legal if the school allows student speakers to say whatever they wish, without any censorship, or if students spontaneously begin to pray at a pause in the graduation ceremony.
In that regard, the ACLU position is in agreement with other religious-liberty groups contending that the Lee vs. Weisman decision cannot be construed as absolutely prohibiting all prayer.
Those groups generally argue that while government may not favor one religion over another, it should accommodate the legitimate religious expression of its citizens. That would include prayers at graduations.
That's the position of The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville-based religious liberty organization.
Rutherford lawyers contend there were three specific problems with the situation at the Rhode Island school that caused the court majority to find it illegal.
First, the school principal mandated that the prayers be given. Second, he chose the rabbi who gave the prayers. Third, he provided guidelines on what would be acceptable in the prayers.
The institute contends that if students initiate the graduation activities, or if a student speaker chooses individually to pray - especially if the school prints a disclaimer that the views of the student speakers are not necessarily those of the school - the problems cited in the Supreme Court case would be avoided.
This approach is based largely on the first case to be decided in a federal court based on the Lee vs. Weisman decision.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas ruled last year that if a majority of a senior class voted to allow nonsectarian, non-proselytizing prayer at its graduation, the element of coercion would be removed and the prayers could be said.
Loudoun County, Va., officials were attempting to follow the guidelines from that case earlier this year when they decided to allow prayers if a majority of seniors voted to have them and a student volunteered to deliver them.
After two weeks of unsuccessful negotiations over the issue, the Virginia ACLU and a Maryland-based group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit Friday to stop the prayers, scheduled for June 24 at two of the county's four high school graduations.
Steven K. Green, a lawyer for Americans United, said the suit argues that the Texas decision was wrong and, in any case, that the Loudon County case is different in that the vote was not student-directed, but initiated by school officials who will review the prayers before they are said.
A decision on the injunction could come any time, though a hearing on the merits of the case won't be possible until well after graduations are past.
To complicate things a bit more, the Supreme Court refused last weekto hear a challenge to an Illinois law requiring public school teachers to lead their classes in the Pledge of Allegiance, which has included the words "under God" since 1954.
A lower court decided that, since students aren't required to say the pledge and are not penalized if they don't, it is OK for teachers to lead its recitation.
So school boards are up in the air again.
As a last resort, the Rutherford Institute and the American Center for Law and Justice have advised school boards that they can allow a moment of silence at the beginning and end of graduation ceremonies.
If individuals prayed silently or if the audience spontaneously began to recite the Lord's Prayer, no one could construe that as government coercion to pray, they argue.
Americans United staff member Joseph Conn said last week he heard of just such a thing happening in a Kentucky high school recently, though he seemed a bit skeptical about how spontaneous it was.
"We're getting more piety out of students now than we've seen in 20 years," he said.
by CNB