Lee v. Weisman

Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992), was a United States Supreme Court decision regarding school prayer . It was the first major school prayer case decided by the Rehnquist Court . It held that schools may not sponsor clerics to conduct even non-denominational prayer. The Court followed a broad interpretation of the Establishment Clause reaffirming the longstanding principles of the earlier school prayer cases _Engel v. Vitale _ and _Abington School District v. Schempp _.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Decision

  • 2.1 Concurring opinions

  • 2.2 Dissenting opinion

• 3 Subsequent developments

• 4 See also

• 5 Notes

• 6 References

• 7 Further reading

• 8 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lee_v._Weisman&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Robert E. Lee was the principal of Nathan Bishop Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island . He invited a rabbi to deliver a prayer at the 1989 graduation ceremony, but the day before the ceremony, the parents of student Deborah Weisman filed a motion in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island for a temporary restraining order to bar the rabbi from delivering the invocation, arguing that it would violate the Establishment Clause . Chief Judge Francis J. Boyle denied the Weismans' motion, "essentially because the Court was not afforded adequate time to consider the important issues of the case". The family did attend the graduation ceremony, and the rabbi did deliver the benediction.

The Weismans continued their litigation after the graduation, and Chief Judge Boyle ultimately ruled in their favor, issuing an order "permanently enjoining the School Committee of the City of Providence , its agents or employees from authorizing or encouraging the use of prayer in connection with school graduation or promotion exercises". A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the District Court's order, over the dissenting opinion of Judge Levin H. Campbell . The school district petitioned for a writ of _certiorari _ in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the prayer was nonsectarian and was doubly voluntary: Deborah was free not to stand for the prayer and because participation in the ceremony itself was not required. Arguments were heard on November 6, 1991. Charles J. Cooper appeared for the petitioners, Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr argued as _amicus curiae _ on behalf of the Bush administration in support of the school district, and Rhode Island attorney Sandra A. Blanding appeared on behalf of the Weismans. Justice Anthony Kennedy had been critical of the Court's decisions on school prayer, and many court watchers thought that he would provide the crucial fifth vote to reverse the lower court's ruling and deal a major blow to the twin separationist pillars of Engel and Abington.

Decision

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lee_v._Weisman&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Decision")

The 5–4 decision was announced on June 24, 1992. It was a somewhat surprising as a victory for the Weismans and a defeat for the school district. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, which maintained previous Supreme Court precedents sharply limiting the place of religion within the nation's public schools—far from joining those who favored curtailing restrictions on school prayers. The Blackmun papers reveal that Kennedy switched his vote during the deliberations, as he also did in _Planned Parenthood v. Casey _, saying that his draft majority opinion upholding the prayer exercise "looked quite wrong." Instead, Kennedy wrote an opinion that repudiated the school district's main arguments. He found fault with Principal Lee's decision to give the rabbi who was planning to offer the graduation invocation a pamphlet on composing prayers for civic occasions:

Through these means, the principal directed and controlled the content of the prayers. Even if the only sanction for ignoring the instructions were that the rabbi would not be invited back, we think no religious representative who valued his or her continued reputation and effectiveness in the community would incur the State's displeasure in this regard. It is a cornerstone principle of our Establishment Clause jurisprudence that it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government, and that is what the school officials attempted to do.

Kennedy also noted that the nonsectarian nature of the prayer was no defense, as the Establishment Clause forbade coerced prayers in public schools, not just those representing a specific religious tradition. He addressed the State's contention that attendance was voluntary at the graduation exercises:

To say a teenage student has a real choice not to attend her high school graduation is formalistic in the extreme. True, Deborah could elect not to attend commencement without renouncing her diploma; but we shall not allow the case to turn on this point. Everyone knows that, in our society and in our culture, high school graduation is one of life's most significant occasions. A school rule which excuses attendance is beside the point. Attendance may not be required by official decree, yet it is apparent that a student is not free to absent herself from the graduation exercise in any real sense of the term "voluntary," for absence would require forfeiture of those intangible benefits which have motivated the student through youth and all her high school years.

Finally, Kennedy formulated what is now known as the coercion test

in answering the argument that participation in the prayer was voluntary:

The school district's supervision and control of a high school graduation ceremony places subtle and indirect public and peer pressure on attending students to stand as a group or maintain respectful silence during the invocation and benediction. A reasonable dissenter of high school age could believe that standing or remaining silent signified her own participation in, or approval of, the group exercise, rather than her respect for it. And the State may not place the student dissenter in the dilemma of participating or protesting. Since adolescents are often susceptible to peer pressure, especially in matters of social convention, the State may no more use social pressure to enforce orthodoxy than it may use direct means. The embarrassment and intrusion of the religious exercise cannot be refuted by arguing that the prayers are of a _de minimis _ character, since that is an affront to the rabbi and those for whom the prayers have meaning, and since any intrusion was both real and a violation of the objectors' rights.

The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by **the Establishment Clause **. It is beyond dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which "establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to do so."

As we have observed before, there are heightened concerns with protecting fre

…