Engel v. Vitale

Engel v. Vitale (1962) is noteworthy because it is the U.S. Supreme Court's first case involving state–sponsored prayer in public schools. After striking down prayer in Engel, the Court has handed down an unbroken line of cases prohibiting state–sponsored prayer or religious activities in public schools.

At issue in Engel was a prayer that the New York State Board of Regents developed for suggested use in an attempt to inculcate moral and spiritual values in children who attended public schools. The proposed prayer in Engel read: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.” When a local school board enacted a policy calling for the daily recitation of the prayer in classes, it included a provision that allowed parents to ask that their children be exempted from taking part in the prayer as long as their requests were in writing. Even so, a group of parents challenged the board's policy as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, pursuant to which Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. In Engel, the Court acknowledged that it could resolve the dispute at bar (by the court or judges) based on the decisions in previous cases. As the litigation proceeded, the Court of Appeals of New York upheld earlier state court judgments that affirmed the constitutionality of the prayer as long as school officials did not compel students to participate against their wishes or those of their parents (Engel v. Vitale). However, on further review, the Supreme Court reversed in favor of the parents.

At the outset, it is interesting to note that the Supreme Court's opinion was authored by Justice Hugo Black. Black was the member of the High Court bench who introduced the Jeffersonian metaphor, taken from his letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association in 1802, of building a wall of separation between church and state in 1947. At that time, the Court, in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township (Everson), upheld a board policy that was enacted pursuant to a state statute from New Jersey that authorized parental reimbursement for the cost of transporting their children to the nonpublic schools that they attended. According to the Engel Court, then, without relying directly on the Jeffersonian metaphor or Everson, the daily recitation of the prayer was unconstitutional because it was a religious activity that was inconsistent with the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court devoted a significant portion of its rationale to reviewing the history of state–sponsored prayer in the Anglo–American system of government from 16th–century England [Page 345]through the American colonial period. More specifically, the Court highlighted Jefferson's introduction of the famous wall of separation metaphor and the writings of James Madison, particularly as they applied to Virginia, as opposing efforts at establishment in order to place all religions on an equal footing in the eyes of the law. The Court added that writers in other states adopted similar perspectives in calling for separation of church and state. In so doing, the Court was convinced that the prayer from New York would have officially established a religion in violation of the First Amendment. The majority of the justices observed that the First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise clauses forbid different types of governmental encroachment against religion insofar as the latter prevents the government from acting as the New York State Board of Regents sought to do in requiring prayer in public schools.

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