Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 11, 1993 TAG: 9308250323
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Court watchers say the high court simply may have decided not to decide - yet - whether student-led prayer is a constitutionally acceptable alternative to a clergyman delivering an invocation. The justices may be waiting for several lower courts to rule on the issue before deciding it themselves.
In any case, it isn't clear that the student-led guideline should be constitutionally acceptable.
The case the court declined to review concerned a Houston-area high school where students voted to open and close their graduation ceremony with a prayer delivered by a class member. The maneuver was designed to skirt a high court ruling last year that school officials cannot sponsor or mandate prayer by including it in a graduation program.
The lower court reasoned in the Texas case that prayer initiated by students rather than school officials does not violate the First Amendment's ban on state establishment of religion.
But it did not deal with the concern that students not wishing to pray might still feel under some pressure to participate if they want to attend their own graduation ceremonies.
Rights, by definition, cannot be overturned by majority rule. A tyranny of the majority has no less sting than the tyranny of an authority.
Of course, in protecting the rights of a minority, the rights of the majority cannot be sacrificed. There is, as always, nothing to prevent students who wish to pray from doing so on their own, in a group or singly, or from organizing religious services apart from the official, state-sponsored graduation program.
It also would be constitutionally indefensible, in all likelihood, to bar student speakers from including a prayer in their remarks, if that is their choice. To censor their address would be to violate their right to free speech, as well as free exercise of religion.
It's a different matter, however, if a student is designated to lead others in prayer during an official school ceremony. Here is where the rights of a minority of even one must be protected.
This area of the law remains murky, in part because of the complexities involved (what about congressional chaplains, for instance?), in part because competing rights must be balanced, and in part because the Supreme Court has yet to offer adequate guidance.
But this much should be clear: In a free society, religion ought to be beyond the reach of political authority. For that matter, citizens' commitment to their religious beliefs should be secure enough not to require government reinforcement.
by CNB