Significance: This ruling established that prayers recited in schools—even those that do not reflect a specific church or denomination—are unconstitutional because they run the risk of interfering with the rights of students who did not wish to pray at all.
Background: A high school in Providence, Rhode Island, employed a local rabbi to say a prayer as part of its graduation ceremony. The school was careful to insist on a prayer that did not come from any specific religious tradition. However, Daniel Weisman—the father of one of the students—felt that prayers should not occur in the school at all and sued the school principal, Robert E. Lee, for inviting the rabbi.
Decision: This case was argued on November 6, 1991, and decided on June 24, 1992, by a vote of 5 to 4. Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke for the Court, which ruled in favor of Weisman. The Court indicated that even though participation in the prayer ceremony was not required, students might feel pressure from peers, other society members, or the school to participate. Because the First Amendment’s establishment clause forbids state institutions from using any kind of pressure, even psychological pressure, to make someone participate in a religious exercise, the Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Byron White, and Clarence Thomas dissented on the grounds that graduating high school students were young adults, not children, and that peer pressure to pray could not be too different from the pressure to stand and salute the flag, which the Court had previously ruled could be required.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “One timeless lesson is that, if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows [casts off] its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of . . . conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people. To compromise that principle today would be to deny our own tradition and forfeit our standing to urge others to secure the protections of that tradition for themselves.”
