Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 27, 1995 TAG: 9506270053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Although not a precedent-setting ruling on such prayers, the court's action in an Idaho case is a victory for school-prayer supporters. But confusion still reigns over just what the Constitution allows.
The National School Boards Association had urged the justices to take the Idaho case.
``The public schools are currently the site of religious warfare,'' the association said in a friend-of-the-court brief. ``School boards are caught in the middle and do not know which way to turn.''
Other graduation-prayer controversies are in the legal pipeline and could arrive for Supreme Court action in its 1995-96 term, which begins in October.
In their brief order, the justices told the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss as moot - no longer legally relevant - a case in which the appeals court said such prayers violate the constitutional doctrine of church-state separation.
Student-led prayers had been challenged by Samuel Harris, who graduated from Idaho's Grangeville High School on June 2.
The school district's appeal had arrived at the nation's highest court in January, but no invocation or benediction was allowed at the commencement ceremony for Harris' graduating class.
``Sam won what he wanted, but things are as muddy today as ever,'' said his American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, Stephen Pevar of Denver.
Jay Sekulow, a lawyer with the pro-prayer American Center for Law and Justice, called Monday's action ``an encouraging sign in the fight to protect the ... rights of people of faith.''
``It has always been our position that student-led, student-initiated prayer at graduation is constitutionally protected speech,'' Sekulow said. ``Today's Supreme Court order reinforces that belief.''
The justices' order will remove as a binding precedent the 9th Circuit's ruling in Harris' case, and with it any legal impediment to student-led school prayers in the nine western states that make up the 9th Circuit: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
The Supreme Court in 1992 strengthened its longtime ban on officially sponsored worship in public schools by prohibiting clergy-led prayers at a Rhode Island public school's graduation ceremonies.
``The Constitution forbids the state to exact religious conformity from a student as the price of attending her own high school graduation,'' the 1992 decision said.
But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently ruled that the 1992 decision does not apply to graduation prayers planned and led by graduating seniors. And the Supreme Court silently left that ruling intact in 1993.
The 5th Circuit's ruling is binding in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
In the Idaho case, school board officials said their policy of letting graduating seniors decide whether to include prayers at their commencement ceremony should have been upheld.
But the 9th Circuit, by a 2-1 vote last November, ruled that ``the school ultimately controls the event'' because seniors ``have authority to make decisions regarding graduation only because the school allows them to have it.''
Noting that officially sanctioned prayers have been banned from public schools since 1962, the appeals court said, ``We do not think the character of the prayers changes when said at graduation.''
The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, has cited the 5th Circuit's ruling in its extensive efforts in behalf of school prayer.
by CNB