Community Commentary

DENNIS L. EVANS

Negative comments from Daily Pilot columnists Steve Smith and Peter

Buffa illustrate the lack of knowledge of many citizens regarding the

recent U.S. Supreme Court decision banning student-led prayers at school

events, such as football games and assemblies.

Many people who question the ruling in Santa Fe Independent School

District (Texas) vs. Doe do not understand the content of the U.S.

Constitution’s 1st Amendment and the legal status of public schools as

instruments of the government.

The protection of individual rights found in the 1st Amendment -- and

indeed throughout the remainder of the Bill of Rights and the main body

of the Constitution -- are protections against government intrusion into

areas such as religion, speech and the press.

In the Santa Fe case, the local school board had adopted a policy that

allowed students by majority vote to choose whether a prayer should begin

certain school events and to select a student to deliver that prayer.

The Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote held the Santa Fe policy was an

example of the government -- in that case a school board --

inappropriately involving itself in religious matters. In supporting the

court’s majority, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: “The religious liberty

protected by the Constitution is abridged when the state affirmatively

sponsors the particular religious practice of prayer.”

The prohibition of government involvement in religious matters is

manifested by the court’s demand for governmental neutrality; the proper

constitutional role of government being to neither encourage religious

practices nor discourage them.

In the Santa Fe case, the court ruled that while students --

consistent with free-speech protections -- may pray privately on their

own or with friends before, during or after school, campus officials

cannot sponsor a group prayer or encourage a student to deliver a

religious message at a school event.

Thus the core issue in this case is not free speech but governmental

intrusion into religion.

Perhaps Smith and Buffa do not understand that public school boards

are extensions of state government and, as such, are governmental

entities. Originally, the prohibitions against government interference

contained in the Bill of Rights applied only to the national government.

But with the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1868, those prohibitions

were extended to the individual states as well.

That public schools and public school officials, including school

board members, are considered agents of the state is a well-established

legal principle. The 1985 U.S. Supreme Court 4th Amendment case, New

Jersey vs. TLO, used the following language to reiterate that message:

“In carrying out searches and disciplinary functions ... school officials

act as representatives of the state, not just as surrogates for the

parents, and they cannot claim the parent’s immunity from the strictures

of the [Constitution].”

So when local public school board members or other public school

officials use their positions to propose the posting of the Ten

Commandments in our schools or the teaching of creationism (or its new

alias “intelligent design”), or school prayer, they are not speaking as

private citizens. Rather, they speak as agents of the government, and as

such they have no business promoting their own particular religious

orthodoxy.

The beauty of our educational system is that those who want religion

and prayer as part of the school setting have the constitutionally

protected opportunity for a private/parochial school education.

Our basic constitutional rights are founded on the principle of

protecting the individual from a government with unrestricted power.

Consistent with that principle is the protection of the minority from

the tyranny of the majority. Thus, neither we nor our elected

representatives can “vote” to violate or abridge those basic

constitutional rights, even for a popular cause.

The Supreme Court decision in Santa Fe Independent School District vs.

Doe rightfully reaffirms that principle.