Summary of Decision: Question and Answer Format

Can Students Pray in Public Schools? Where? How?

Since the early 1960s, the Supreme Court has held that State-required school prayer is in conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Government sponsorship of devotional activities such as prayer and Bible reading in public schools constitutes an establishment of religion that violates the Constitution and goes beyond the bounds of government's constitutional power. In no uncertain terms, government at all levels is constitutionally barred from using public schools directly or indirectly to inculcate religious faith or belief.

Currently, public school students have the right to privately pray as individuals or in groups as long as they are not disruptive. Because the Establishment Clause does not apply to purely private speech, students have the right to read religious materials, say grace before meals, pray before tests, and discuss religion with other willing student listeners provided it does not affect regular classroom activities. In classrooms, students have the right to pray quietly except when required to be actively engaged in school activities.

In settings such as the cafeteria or in the halls, students may pray either audibly or silently, subject to the same rules of order as apply to other speech in those locations. However, the right to engage in voluntary prayer does not include, for example, the right to have a captive listener or to coerce other students to join.

What about Prayer at Graduations and Baccalaureates? Is this legal?

School officials may not authorize or organize prayer at graduation, nor may they mandate a religious baccalaureate ceremony. If the public school generally rents out its facilities to all private groups, it must rent them out on the same terms, and on a first-come first-served basis, to organizers of privately sponsored religious baccalaureate services, provided that the school officials do not extend preferential treatment to the baccalaureate ceremony and disclaim official endorsement of the programs.

The lower courts have handed down conflicting rulings under the federal Constitution on student-initiated prayer at graduation. Until the issue is authoritatively resolved by the United States Supreme Court, schools should ask the local counsel to the school board what rules apply in their area.   

Can Officials Participate or Encourage Religious Activities?

School officials, when acting in their official capacities, are treated as state agents.  When acting in those capacities, they are forbidden from promoting or soliciting student religious activity.  Accordingly, when acting in their official capacities, teachers may not engage in religious activities with their students. However, teachers may engage in private religious activity in faculty lounges.

Can Public Schools Teach Religion?

It is constitutional to provide education about religion in public schools. In the 1960s school prayer cases, the United States Supreme Court indicated that public school education may include teaching about religion. However, when teaching about religion, certain guidelines are required to be followed:

1. The school's approach should be academic, not devotional;

2. The school may strive for student awareness of religions and religious beliefs, but should not press for student acceptance of any one religion;

3. The school may sponsor study about religion, but may not sponsor the practice of religion;

4. The school may expose students to concepts involving religious diversity but may not impose any particular view;

5.  The school may educate about religions but may not promote or denigrate any religion;

6.  The school may inform the student about various beliefs, but should not seek to conform him or her to any particular belief.

As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said, "[i]t might well be said that one's education is not complete without the study of comparative religion, or the history of religion as well as the advancement of civilizations."2  It would be difficult, if not impossible, to instruct on subjects such as art, music, literature and most social sciences without discussing religious influences.

It is constitutionally permissible to teach objectively about the role of religion in the history of the United States and other countries: one can teach that the Pilgrims came to this country with a particular religious vision, that Catholics and others have been subject to persecution or that many of those participating in the abolitionist movements had religious motivations. Religion also may be taught about in special courses or units. Some secondary schools for example, offer such courses as world religions, the Bible as literature, and religious literature of the West and the East.

These same rules apply to the continuing debate surrounding theories of evolution. Schools can teach about explanations of life on earth.  In social studies classes, religious theories can be taught.  In science class, however, teachers may only present genuinely scientific analyses of life on earth, but not religious explanations that have not been verified by scientific methodology.

Schools may not refuse to teach evolutionary theory in order to avoid offending the religious nor may they avoid these rules by classifying an article of religious faith as scientific in nature. Public schools must not teach as scientific fact or theory any religious doctrine, including "creationism," although any genuinely scientific theory for or against any explanation of life may be taught. Just as they may neither advance nor inhibit any religious doctrine, teachers should not ridicule, for example, a student's religious explanation for life on earth.

Can Students Speak about Religion in their Schoolwork Assignments?

Students can communicate their religious beliefs in their schoolwork assignments and such expressions are constitutionally protected. School administrators cannot reject such work because they include a religious symbol or address religious themes. Teachers may not require students to modify, include or excise religious views in their assignments, if germane. These assignments should be examined by the use of customary academic standards of substance, relevance, appearance and grammar.

A more problematic issue for school administrators and teachers are public expressions of religious views made in the classroom. School officials must carefully steer between the free speech rights of student speakers who assert a right to express themselves on religious subjects and the rights of student listeners to be free of unwelcome religious persuasion in a public school classroom.

Religious or anti-religious remarks made in the ordinary course of classroom discussion or student presentations are acceptable and constitute a protected right. For example, if in a sex education class a student remarks that abortion should be illegal because God has prohibited it, a teacher cannot silence the remark, ridicule it, rule it out of bounds or approve it, any more than a teacher may suppress a religiously-based comment in favor of choice.

If a class exercise requires an oral presentation on a subject of the student's choosing and, for example, the student responds by conducting a religious service, the school has a right - as well as the duty - to prevent itself from being used as a church. Other students are not voluntarily in attendance and cannot be forced to be an unwilling congregation.

School officials may limit religious remarks that are irrelevant to the subject at hand just as they would any other irrelevant comment.

Can Students Distribute Religious Literature?

Students can dispense religious materials to other students, subject to the same reasonable time, place and manner restrictions imposed by the school authorities on the distribution of all non-school literature. A school may limit the distribution of literature to a specific table at specific times. It may not single out religious literature with difficult regulations.

Outsiders cannot be allowed to enter the classroom or school grounds to distribute religious or anti-religious literature. The issue of whether community groups can distribute religious material in the common areas of the public school has not been considered by any court.

What about Before- or After- School Religious Activities?

Student involvement in before- or after- school events on or off school grounds is constitutionally permissible. School officials, acting in an official capacity, may neither discourage nor encourage participation in such an event.        

Students have the right to speak to, and attempt to persuade, other students about religious issues just as they do with regard to political topics. School officials should intervene to stop students' religious speech if it turns into harassment aimed at a student or small group of students. It is constitutionally permissible for a student to approach another and issue an invitation to attend a religious service. If the invitation is turned down and repeated invitations ensue, then the issue of religious harassment may come into play.

What about Religious Holidays?

Public schools may teach about religious holidays, may celebrate the secular features of  holidays and may objectively instruct about the religious aspects of holidays. They may not observe any holiday as a religious event. Schools should generally excuse students who do not wish to take part in holiday events.

Recognition of and information about such holidays should focus on the origin, history and generally agreed-upon meaning of the observance. If the approach is objective, neither advancing nor inhibiting religion, it can foster among students understanding and mutual respect within and beyond the local community.3

Can Students be Excused from Religiously Objectionable Lessons?

School officials have the authority to excuse individual students from instructions that are objectionable to students or their parents on the basis of the religious content.  Schools can exercise that authority in ways which would lessen many conflicts over curriculum content. If it is determined that a certain lesson substantially burdens a student's free exercise of religion and if the school cannot prove a compelling interest in requiring full attendance, the school would be legally required to excuse the student.

Can Schools Limit Students' Religious Clothing?

Religious symbols or messages on clothing cannot be singled out for suppression. Students may wear religious apparel, such as yarmulkes and head scarves, and they may not be forced to wear gym clothes that they regard, on religious grounds, as inappropriate.

Can Schools Provide Released Time?

School officials have the discretion to release students to attend religious instruction off school premises, provided that schools do not encourage or discourage participation or penalize those who do not attend the religious instruction. Schools may not allow religious instruction by outsiders on the school grounds during the school day.