Justices Back Religious Rights in School Cases

WASHINGTON — In two victories for religious-rights advocates, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that public schools may not discriminate against speakers simply because their message is religious and let stand a ruling permitting students to offer a prayer at a graduation ceremony.

Taken together, the decisions convey the message that public schools need not be religion-free zones.

Since it first outlawed official school prayers in 1962, the high court repeatedly has insisted that public schools may not sponsor or encourage religious activities.

But the stance has been interpreted by many school officials to mean that any form of religious activity must be excluded, even if it is sponsored by other groups.

In its main ruling, the high court, by a 9-0 vote, declared that school officials may not exclude a group or speaker from their grounds just because they intend to offer a religious message. To do so violates the church group’s free speech rights, the court said.

The decision strikes down a New York school district’s policy of permitting civic and social groups to use its high school auditorium in the evening but denying similar use from a church group for lectures and a film that would promote “traditional Christian family values.”

“The government violates the First Amendment when it denies access to a speaker solely to suppress the point of view he espouses,” wrote Justice Byron R. White, quoting earlier rulings. In this case, the school system denied the church group’s request to meet there “solely because the film dealt with the subject from a religious viewpoint.”

In addition, permitting the Christian group to meet at the school cannot be viewed as the school district “endorsing religion or any particular creed,” White added in his opinion in the case (Lamb’s Chapel vs. Center Moriches School District, 91-2024).

In recent years, Christian evangelicals and other religious activists have complained that school officials display a “hostility” toward religion by excluding them when other groups are included. They have said that principals sometimes forbid students to pass out religious leaflets or Bibles, even though the distribution of other materials is allowed.

Monday’s decision suggests that, while the schools may not show favoritism toward religion, they may not discriminate against it either.

In the second action, the court refused without comment to hear a challenge to a federal appeals court ruling from Texas that permitted high school seniors to open and close their graduation with a prayer.

Last year, the court ruled, 5 to 4, that school officials may not sponsor a graduation prayer delivered by a cleric.

In this case, however, the students at a Houston-area high school voted to have a member of the senior class deliver a prayer at graduation.

That prayer did not violate the First Amendment’s ban on an “establishment of religion,” a federal appeals court ruled in November, because the religious message was not sponsored by government officials.

“A majority of students can do what the state acting on its own cannot do to incorporate prayer in its public high school graduation ceremonies,” wrote Judge Thomas Reavley of Austin, Tex.

The decision has been cited by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in bulletins sent to most of the nation’s school districts. Lawyers working for his Christian Coalition said that the appellate court ruling clears the way for student-initiated prayers at school.

The court’s refusal Monday to hear an appeal in the case (Jones vs. Clear Creek Independent School District, 92-1564) does not necessarily mean that the justices agree with the principle set forth in the lower court ruling. The high court carefully selects its cases and often delays action until several lower courts have ruled on a close question. They could, for example, choose to take up this church-state issue next year when a replacement for Justice White has been chosen.

The decisions give students the right “to speak about God during graduation ceremonies this month,” said Jay Sekulow, counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented the church group in the New York case. “The Supreme Court has clearly stated that religious speech must not be censored from the marketplace of ideas.”

Liberal groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, supported the religious groups in their appeal, agreeing that the free speech clause forbids discrimination against religious speakers.

In other actions, the court:

* Refused to reinstate a lawsuit by the families of those who died in 1988 when the U.S. warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner (Koohi vs. United States, 92-1504). The law does not permit filing claims against the government during times of war, and a federal appeals court ruled that the hostilities in the Persian Gulf were akin to war.

* Refused to hear an appeal by Elizabeth Taylor’s husband, Larry Fortensky, of his drunk driving conviction (Fortensky vs. California, 92-1674). His lawyers argued that he was stopped based solely on an “anonymous tip” that was phoned in, rather than evidence obtained firsthand by police.