Oh is that so
Texas governor Rick Perry called a court ruling that banned school prayers at a public high school graduation
“reprehensible.”
“The First Amendment prohibits governments from interfering with Americans’ rights to freely express their religious beliefs, and accordingly the U.S. Supreme Court has maintained that Congress may convene every day with a prayer,” Perry said in a statement.
Oh yeah? But then governments are interfering with Americans’ rights to freely express their beliefs that there is no god, aren’t they. My religious belief is that god is a non-existent imaginary agent. I don’t get to say that at public school graduation ceremonies or Congress’s morning prayer. Since other people do get to say that god is a real, non-imaginary agent, the state is interfering with my rights to express my religious beliefs.
It is also, of course, interfering with the religious beliefs of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Wiccans, Scientologists, Crefto Dollarians, and so on.
I look forward to your letter, Governor Perry.
Maybe it is time that Texas go ahead and secede, and take Oklahoma with them, since clearly Perry and a majority of his constituents hate America and its laws and values.
How can someone who doesn’t understand the first amendment be governor?
Perry won’t be happy until the only schools here in Texas are religious indoctrination centers. Perry’s a traitor, pure and simple.
@jose:
These days Republicans ONLY vote for people who are ignorant of the Constitution and/or hate America… it is a plank of the party platform, as near as I can tell.
Of course they do. That’s pretty much the point, isn’t it? People want to say that this isn’t establishment – and, legally, it may not be – but it certainly does suppress free expression.
Well legally in terms of existing jurisprudence, it is establishment, I think – that is, various courts have held that it is.
But I’d better let Rieux handle this one…
I haven’t checked but have any of the secular-promoting accommodationists commented on this situation or do we just assume that they agree with Gnus here.
Oh I think so – the latter. Secularism in public schools is not a gnu thing. The Rev. Barry Lynn is the head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, after all.
See we could all join hands and unite to etc etc etc on this one. It could be totes interfaith.
Why aren’t the inter-faitheists ever as interested in this sort of bridge-building community effort stuff, by standing with religious people who defend church-state separation, versus the “bash atheists or homosexual activists to score brownie points” sort of activities?
I was a Valedictorian who gave a speech at my high school graduation long ago. I don’t think it would have gone over very well if I slipped in the observation that “there is no evidence for souls, so don’t ever let anyone manipulate you by claiming to know about such things– get your science from scientists!”
It’s perfectly secular, of course. I hope we’ll be seeing such things slipped into graduation speeches so that people like Perry will understand why sectarian prayer is not allowed at graduation– (or rather, it’s allowed– just send your psychic messages to your omniscient invisible friend silently in such a way that others are not forced to defer to your magical beliefs– just as you’d want the Muslims, Scientologists, Wiccans, and Mormons at your school to do!) Is that so hard, governor?
I could not find a copy of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’s order (dissolving the District Court’s injunction) on the Court’s web site, perhaps because the order was issued late on Friday June 3rd, but a pdf copy of the school district’s emergency motion is here: https://www.oag.state.tx.us/newspubs/releases/2011/060211schultz_motion.pdf
For the Fifth Circuit judges, whose rulings occasionally are outliers reflecting a healthy distrust or skepticism toward the federal government, the key issue obviously was whether Ms. Schultz and her parents had shown that the planned graduation prayers originated with or were going to be conducted with the sponsorship of the school district administration. The Fifth Circuit ruling does not prevent any student from proceeding with the suit in District Court. It’s just that the issue of the 2011 graduation has been rendered moot. I hope that some parents and students made careful and copious video recordings of exactly how the “student-led” prayer was handled, and how many times “Our Lord Jee-zus” was referred to.
Sometimes I think Rick Perry is a big idiot, and sometimes not. Although he is nowhere near as clever and calculating as Newt Gingrich, I think that Perry understands that the U. S. Supreme Court precedent that validated non-sectarian prayer to open legislative sessions (Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983)) doesn’t really have that much to do with whether school-sponsored, school-led prayer represents an unconstitutional violation of the Free Exercise clause. The decisions holding such school-led prayers to be unconstitutional came more than 20 years before Marsh, were not overruled by Marsh, and have been followed in cases coming after Marsh, including Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000).
Why did Perry bring up legislative session prayer? Because he figured that he could get away with it in the context of his main audience, Texas voters.
Actually, articulett, it’s perfectly fine for a student appointed to give a speech to offer a prayer — or criticize religion — all he or she wants, just so long as the student is the one who independently and voluntarily initiates any religious content. Such prayers don’t run afoul of the establishment clause of the First Amendment any more than the millions of students offering their own silent prayers before tests every day. The problem is when schools mandate and/or endorse prayer, either by having a school official or school-appointed religious figure offer a prayer, or by appointing a student for the specific purpose of leading a prayer, or in any other way exerting control over the religious content of a student’s speech. However, if a student who is chosen to speak at graduation for legitimately non-sectarian reasons — such as outstanding academic achievement (e.g. the valedictorian) or student leadership (e.g. the elected student body president) — and if that student’s speech content is not mandated or controlled by school officials with regard to religion, the student is free to give a speech as God-bothering and prayerful as he or she desires (and many do).
Or, in other, shorter words: What students say is a free speech issue, and school officials requiring student speakers at graduation NOT to mention their religious convictions would in fact violate both the free speech and freedom to exercise religion clauses of the First Amendment. However, what public school officials say, or what they appoint someone else to say, or what they require students to say, is an establishment clause issue insofar as public school officials are agents of the state.
@#10. That’s what I’m trying to say. If this tendency exists, and it seems to, it’s a double standard…we share 99% of our intellectual DNA after all. Accommodationists appear to me more concerned with putting Gnus in their place. Or the bridge-building is one-sided.
#13
Isn’t this what the original ruling stated? That the graduation could not include a prayer or benediction BUT that the valedictorian could talk about God all he wanted?
Andrew B,
I have not been able to locate the District Court’s original temporary restraining order / opinion via the District Court’s web site (perhaps because the order was issued on June 1st after a May 31 hearing), and I don’t want to take the time now to do a PACER or WestLaw search, which would cost me real money. But in the school district’s emergency appeal motion, the District Court’s order was characterized (fairly or not, I don’t know) as follows:
The key issue in this case, and a difficult one, is when and whether a prayer or invocation delivered by a student at a graduation ceremony is truly student-initiated, or actually sponsored and encouraged by the school administration. Here, the school district changed the references in the printed graduation program to refer to “opening remarks” and “closing remarks” instead of to an “invocation” and “benediction,” and the school district also planned to include some sort of disclaimer in the printed program, saying that any religious expression during student remarks should be attributed only to the students and were not suggested or approved by the school administration, etc.
Could the valedictorian / class president get up during her graduation speech, and, entirely on her own, give a speech referring to her religious faith and her personal relationship with Jesus Christ, without creating an Establishment Clause violation? Yes, if the school did not put her up to it. Could she ask the members of the audience to bow their heads and pray, or say “in Jesus’ name” or “Amen” at the end of her speech, without creating an Establishment Clause violation? Yes if the school district did not put her up to it or encourage her to say these things. Did this student in fact say such things in her talk at the graduation ceremony on June 4th, once the Fifth Circuit Court had dissolved the temporary restraining order? It seems likely to me, given the fulsome praise that I read on a Catholic news web site earlier last week, and given the very common inclination for Christians in Texas to take every opportunity to celebrate their majority-group identity status and to make people who are not in the group feel like sub-humans or second-class citizens.
Uh, no. That’s not the key issue. The key issue is just how benign the prayer happens to be. In the Fifth Circuit, the Court gave an ok for a non-God (non-sectarian) prayer IF it was approved by the majority of the graduating students and given by a student. Third Circuit Court of appeals, on a different case obviously, said NOT EVEN THAT. Fifth Circuit appeals didn’t rule, precedence rules says 3rd Circuit more important, 5th can pound sand.
Even recently in this issue, student-led Christian prayers have been enjoined by the US Courts. There is no reason to believe that your examples would succeed. No matter how you continue to contrive them. So, if the student started on with some Christian prayer, then the school would be obligated to stop him/her.
Because that the way the law rolls… In cases such as Lassonde v Pleasanton.. and John Doe vs Gossage we can see affirmation of that…
And, of course, the pity-pot and lie-fest from the Christians denied their ‘right’ to make everyone else miserable… Especially if they happen to be Muslim and just want to pray… Not at a ceremony, but just pray on their own…
Here’s my question: can a student in the audience shout out “load of crap, suck it Jesus!” during the prayer without any repercussions? If not, then the religious speech is being given special privilege and is illegal.
Who is the community?
I would have thought that the key issue was not whether a student used words like “prayer” in her speech but whether she invited others to participate in a prayer; because not all members of the audience could be expected to agree, either with the idea of prayer, or with prayer on the student’s terms. The student’s invitation would be a “call to prayer” and therefore would constitute not simply a free expression of opinion but an invitation to participate in a religious ceremony. It would, in fact, be an imposition of a religious ceremony on members of the audience.
Moses ZD wrote,
I disagree, unless by “how benign” you mean “how bland and non-sectarian. I don’t practice law in the 5th Circuit but as I said, the 5th Circuit is somewhat idiosyncratic in its decisions, largely for geographic reasons. I have followed the Supreme Court cases in this area and some of the 9th Circuit cases, but not obsessively.
In student-led prayer / school-sponsored prayer cases, the proposed or actual content of the objected-to prayers is often discussed in the courts’ opinions, but whether a particular prayer will be struck down as an Establishment Clause violation will turn less on the content of the prayer and more on whether it is truly student-initiated or school-sponsored or school-led and therefore potentially coercive.
Would I find an explicitly Christian prayer, with references to Jesus, more objectionable if I were in the audience at a graduation ceremony? Absolutely.
I’m sure Rick Perry would say the same thing if some valedictorian somewhere in Bum-flap, Texas started her speech with the words “Let us thank God for this blessed day [prayerful pause, bows head]…and for making Mohammed his only prophet.”
And that’s the thing. Perry doesn’t care about the first amendment right to free exercise (which has something to do with why he so grossly misreads it). He cares about the (what he views as) the right of Christians to never, ever have anyone tell them “Excuse me, but this is an inappropriate forum for Jesustalk.”
Also, many will recall Santa Fe School District v. Doe (2000)—in that case, which had also originated in Texas, the high court found that a school policy allowing pre-game prayers before football games was unconstitutional even though the prayers were entirely student-led and student-initiated.The scenario in that case was different in some important ways, but much the reasoning falls along the the same lines. From Wikipedia:
It seems to me that the students are certainly entitled to free speech. What they are not entitled to is a platform, in front of an audience attending a school function.
I imagine the test of this will come next year, or the year after that, when a Muslim student leads a prayer. But IANAL.
“I imagine the test of this will come next year, or the year after that, when a Muslim student leads a prayer.”
I doubt it. Most likely it would happen in a fairly liberal area and they’d make it as generic as possible with no mention of Allah.
Julian, I was thinking of the test where the majority has their privilege revoked briefly, not the one where they can pretty much be happy about the prayer.
You left out the followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
Thanks, Jeff D!
If you’re not careful I’ll make a note of your email address and just hassle you directly next time we need legal expertise around here…
:- )
Ophelia,
No problem! I am available to be “hassled,” and I sent you another e-mail address for quicker turnaround. Of course, you also have Rieux and who knows how many other lawyers among your regular readers and commenters.
I’m not a lawyer and I’m learning a lot from this thread. I have to ask, why the preponderance of lawyers at B&W?
The more the merrier, I say. Again thanks, Jeff.
gillt – there’s probably a good proportion of lawyers on any site of this type. There’s a lot of overlap in the kinds of things we think and argue about. That’s my guess. I certainly don’t have access to any secret information on the subject! :- )
My experience with new atheism on the internet is science-centric, so it’s nice to see some other perspectives.