Religious Activities in Public Schools

Engel v. Vitale

In Engel, the Supreme Court invalidated a directive of the Board of Education of Union Free School District No. 9, New Hyde Park, New York, to a principal that the following voluntary prayer to be said aloud by each class in the presence of a teacher at the beginning of the school day: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country” (Engel, p. 422). The Court observed that “neither the fact that the prayer may be denominationally neutral nor the fact that its observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the Establishment Clause” (p. 430).

Lee v. Weisman

Thirty years later, in Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court addressed prayer at a middle school graduation that students were not required to attend. Invoking but not relying on the Establishment Clause principles from the Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) test, the Court struck down a long-standing school practice of permitting a member of the clergy to deliver an invocation and benediction at school district graduations. The Court found that the middle school principal's involvement in the prayer was the same “as if a state statute decreed that the prayers must occur” (Lee, p. 587). The principal determined that prayer would be delivered at the graduation, the principal selected the clergy member to conduct the prayers, and the principal submitted to that person a set of guidelines for preparing a non-sectarian prayer. Although attendance at graduation was voluntary, the Court was of the opinion that since graduations are life-changing, family-celebratory events that are likely to be well attended, such prayer carried “a particular risk of indirect coercion” and “a reasonable perception” that a “dissenter of high school age … is being forced by the State to pray in a manner her conscience will not allow” (p. 593).

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