Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1992

Lee v. Weisman

505 U.S. 577 | 112 S. Ct. 2649 | 120 L. Ed. 2d 467 | 1992 U.S. LEXIS 4364

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that public schools may not sponsor clergy-led graduation prayers when school direction and the practical pressure of attending graduation place students in the position of conforming to a religious exercise or missing a landmark event.

Background

Providence, Rhode Island, permitted public-school principals to invite clergy to offer invocations and benedictions at middle- and high-school graduation ceremonies. At Deborah Weisman's middle-school graduation, Principal Robert E. Lee selected Rabbi Leslie Gutterman, provided him with guidelines for civic prayers, and instructed that the prayers should be nonsectarian. Students stood for the Pledge of Allegiance and remained standing during the rabbi's invocation and benediction.

Daniel Weisman objected before the ceremony and sought emergency relief, but the District Court could not consider the request in time. After the graduation, Weisman sued on behalf of himself and Deborah, seeking an injunction against future graduation prayers. The District Court held the practice unconstitutional under Lemon's effects prong, and the First Circuit affirmed. Because Deborah was then enrolled in a Providence high school that was likely to use prayer at her graduation, the Supreme Court found a live controversy and affirmed in a 5-4 decision.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the case remained a live, justiciable controversy after Deborah Weisman's middle-school graduation had occurred.

Holding

Yes. Deborah's anticipated high-school graduation made the request for prospective relief sufficiently concrete, so the Court did not need to decide Daniel Weisman's taxpayer standing.

Reasoning

Deborah was enrolled at Classical High School, and the record indicated that an invocation and benediction would likely be included at her future graduation. That expected future exposure to the challenged school policy supplied a live controversy over an injunction, even though the middle-school ceremony had already passed.

Issue #2

Whether a public school may include clergy-led, school-sponsored prayer in a secondary-school graduation ceremony consistent with the Establishment Clause.

Holding

No. Providence's policy violated the Establishment Clause because school officials directed a formal religious exercise at an event students were, in practical terms, pressured to attend and participate in.

Reasoning

The Court declined to reconsider Lemon v. Kurtzman because the case could be resolved under established rules governing religious exercises in public schools. At a minimum, the Establishment Clause forbids the government from coercing anyone to support or participate in religion, and the school district's involvement here created a state-sponsored religious exercise.

The school did more than passively allow private religious speech. A principal decided that prayers would occur, selected the rabbi who would lead them, supplied guidelines for civic occasions, and instructed the rabbi to make the prayers nonsectarian. That degree of direction gave the prayers the imprint of the State and resembled the unconstitutional governmental composition of official prayer condemned in Engel v. Vitale.

Calling the prayers nonsectarian did not cure the constitutional problem. Government may not create or prescribe an official civic religion in an effort to make religious expression acceptable to a broad majority. The Religion Clauses protect religious belief from government prescription as well as from government hostility.

A graduation ceremony creates strong social pressure for students to stand with their classmates or at least remain respectfully silent during a prayer. For an adolescent dissenter, those acts can reasonably appear to signify participation or approval. The Establishment Clause bars the government from using such subtle and indirect pressure to enforce religious orthodoxy in a public-school setting.

The formal statement that graduation attendance was voluntary did not eliminate the coercion. High-school graduation is a singularly important life event, and requiring an objecting student to miss it in order to avoid a state-sponsored prayer effectively forces a choice between religious conformity and the intangible benefits of attending her own graduation.

Marsh v. Chambers, which upheld legislative prayer, did not control. Adult legislators may freely enter or leave a legislative session, whereas school officials closely control graduation ceremonies and students face heightened peer and institutional pressure to conform. The school context therefore made the state-directed prayer constitutionally impermissible.

Concurrences

Justice Blackmun

Reasoning

Justice Blackmun agreed that the graduation prayer was unconstitutional but emphasized the broader anti-endorsement rule of Establishment Clause doctrine. In his view, government may not promote or affiliate itself with religious doctrine or organizations, and the school's selection of clergy, involvement in the prayer, and sponsorship of the graduation ceremony plainly placed the government's approval behind religion.

He stressed that coercion is sufficient to establish an Establishment Clause violation, but it is not necessary. Even absent direct pressure to pray, a public school violates the Clause when it conveys that religion or a particular religious belief is favored, because official religious endorsement marks nonadherents as outsiders and threatens both democratic government and religious independence.

Blackmun also defended the separation of government and religion as protective of religion itself. When the State adopts religious messages for civic purposes, it risks political conflict, sectarian rivalry, and the corruption of faith by governmental control.

Justice Souter

Reasoning

Justice Souter agreed that the school-sponsored prayers indirectly coerced students, but wrote to reject two arguments pressed by the school district: that the Establishment Clause permits nonpreferential support for religion and that coercion is a necessary element of an Establishment Clause violation.

In Souter's view, settled precedent forbids governmental support for religion generally, not merely preference for one sect over another. He read the history and drafting of the Establishment Clause to support that rule, noting that the Framers rejected narrower language that would have prohibited only establishment of a particular national church or sect.

A nonpreferentialism rule would also require courts to make inappropriate theological judgments about which prayers are sufficiently ecumenical. Even a purportedly generic prayer favors theistic belief over nontheistic religious views and nonbelief, and a governmental program of rotating religious representation would improperly entangle the State in comparative theology.

Souter further argued that a coercion-only approach would largely duplicate the Free Exercise Clause and drain independent force from the Establishment Clause. The Court's cases prohibit government endorsement of religion even where no one is compelled to participate, because official endorsement itself compromises religious equality and liberty.

Finally, he distinguished legitimate accommodation from impermissible establishment. The government may relieve a genuine burden on religious exercise, but students suffered no burden on their faith from the omission of official prayer at graduation; they remained free to pray privately or organize privately sponsored religious events. State sponsorship therefore amounted to endorsement, not accommodation.

Dissents

Justice Scalia

Reasoning

Justice Scalia argued that the Court ignored the Nation's historical practice of public prayer. Invocations and benedictions at public ceremonies, including graduation exercises, were part of a longstanding American tradition of nonsectarian acknowledgment of God, and that history should guide interpretation of the Establishment Clause.

He maintained that historical establishments involved legal coercion: compulsory worship, financial support for religion through taxation, civil disabilities, or penalties for dissent. In his view, the Clause does not forbid a nondenominational prayer when no student is legally required to attend, recite the prayer, bow, say amen, or otherwise participate.

Scalia rejected the majority's theory that peer and social pressure at graduation amounted to coercion. A student could sit silently or stand respectfully without thereby praying or appearing to endorse the prayer. Treating ordinary social expectations of courtesy as unconstitutional coercion, he argued, created an unbounded and manipulable psychological-coercion test.

He also disputed the majority's characterization of the school's role. The record showed that the principal invited a rabbi and asked for a nonsectarian prayer, but did not show that school officials drafted, edited, screened, or controlled the rabbi's words. In Scalia's view, this limited involvement did not make the rabbi a governmental mouthpiece.

The Court's classroom-prayer precedents, Scalia argued, were distinguishable because compulsory school attendance and the daily instructional setting supplied a backdrop of legal and institutional compulsion. A one-time, voluntary graduation ceremony attended by families did not present the same constitutional concern.

Scalia concluded that the decision unnecessarily displaced a traditional form of public religious expression. He believed the Constitution permits communities to include voluntary, nonsectarian prayer in graduation ceremonies while allowing dissenters to abstain without penalty.