Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 8, 1993 TAG: 9306080203
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Washington Post and The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The court ruled that a public school district may not prevent a church group from using its classrooms after school hours simply because of the group's religious purpose.
Although individual justices differed in their reasoning, the court unanimously found that a New York Court lets some banks continue to sell insurance. B8 district was wrong to turn away an evangelical Christian church that wanted to show a film series on child-rearing.
A victory for both religious organizations and free-speech advocates, the case was consistent with court rulings since 1981 allowing church groups public access.
Separately Monday, the court without comment let stand an appeals court decision permitting prayer at a public school graduation. Just last year, the court ruled unconstitutional prayers at a graduation ceremony in Providence, R.I.
The National School Boards Association had asked the court to take the case, from a district near Houston, because of confusion around the country this spring over whether graduation prayer is allowed.
In another 9-0 decision Monday, the court said that police don't always need a warrant to seize drugs they find while frisking criminal suspects for weapons.
The ruling expands the instances under which police may collect evidence without a warrant, but the court blunted the new rule's reach by strictly limiting how far officers may go in these searches.
The court said the Constitution allows a limited version of the plain-feel rule, but that it applies only when an officer does not go too far in frisking for weapons.
"If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect's outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect's privacy beyond that already authorized by officer's search for weapons," Justice Byron White wrote for the court.
Both the ruling on school access for religious groups and the court's refusal to review the prayer decision Monday underscore the difficulty the court has with balancing the Constitution's mandates of religious freedom and a separation of church and state.
The Constitution says that government "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
Since the 1971 Lemon vs. Kurtzman ruling, the court has, without great uniformity, used a standard that says government practice must have a clearly secular purpose, neither enhance nor inhibit religion and avoid excessive government entanglement with religion. The standard generally calls for strict separation of church and state.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in the school-access case, mocked the court's varying use of the Lemon test and said it should simply be declared dead.
"Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys," Scalia wrote in a concurring opinion. He was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and endorsed in a separate statement by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Scalia's contention was that the test has been inconsistently applied to provide little guidance to government officials who do not know when they may allow a church group a public forum or when they would be in trouble for specifically excluding religious interests.
The high court said Monday that a Long Island, N.Y., school district's refusal to let a church use school space to show a film series on child rearing violated freedom of speech. If the school district had permitted its premises to be used, it would not have been an establishment of religion under the three-part Lemon test, the court said.
White, who wrote the majority opinion, said that a policy that specifically excludes religious groups violates free-speech guarantees because it is effectively favoring some viewpoints over others. He rejected the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that the school property was a limited public forum that could be open only for designated purposes.
He said there would be no violation of the Establishment Clause because the film would not have been shown during school hours, would not have been sponsored by the school and would have been open to the public.
The school prayer case, Jones vs. Clear Creek Independent School District, began after a student and her family challenged the high school's practice of allowing an invocation and benediction at graduation ceremonies.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided with the district, saying that the prayer ceremony did not violate the Establishment Clause because the prayer was delivered by a student rather than a member of the clergy.
by CNB