Friday, March 19, 1999
School board prayer banned
Ruling affects Ohio, Ky.
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN and MARIE McCAIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Public school boards may not open meetings with a denominational or nondenominational prayer, or a silent prayer, federal appellate judges ruled Thursday in Cincinnati.
The 2-1 decision struck down the practice at Cleveland's board of education, but it also binds public school boards throughout Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit said school board prayers, like prayers at graduation ceremonies, violate church-state separation enshrined in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Few Tristate school districts surveyed informally by The Cincinnati Enquirer said they begin meetings with prayer. One that does is the Adams County-Ohio Valley Board of Education, which is battling a lawsuit over another religious matter: the presence of Ten Commandments monuments at each of the county's four public high schools.
“We do pray before our meetings — we try to do it every time, but sometimes we slip up and miss it,” Diane Lewis, vice president of the board, said Thursday.
Though respectful of the federal court ruling, Mrs. Lewis doubted it would eliminate prayer from school-related activities.
“You can pass all kinds of laws banning prayer, but you can't ban prayer — that's a personal thing and no law can prohibit that,” she said.
“A law may throttle you as far as vocalizing (prayer). ... I don't have a problem if it is constitutionally prohibited for us to have a vocal prayer. I will still pray. I don't have to do it aloud.”
Board members for the Reading School District also pray before board meetings.
Prayer “is permissible at our board meetings until (our lawyers) tell us otherwise,” said Reading Superintendent John Varis.
Carrie Dickmann, chairman of the Boone County (Ky.)
Board of Education, said the board does not pray before meetings.
“I feel it would be inappropriate and a violation of the separation of church and state,” Mrs. Dickmann said. “If someone wanted to offer a nondenominational prayer, I'd be OK with that, but as far as a specific religious prayer, I think it would be inappropriate.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has been silent on prayer at school board meetings and Thursday's decision wasn't easy, 6th Circuit Judge Ronald Lee Gilman wrote for himself and Judge R. Guy Cole Jr.
“This case puts the court squarely between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
“The rock is Lee v Weisman, holding that opening prayers at high school graduation ceremonies violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
“The hard place is Marsh v Chambers, ruling that opening prayers are constitutionally permissible at sessions of a state legislature.
“Are the prayers in question more like "school prayers' prohibited by Lee or closer to "legislative prayers' permitted by Marsh?”
Magistrate Judge Patricia Hehmann opted for Lee in an earlier ruling, but U.S. District Judge David D. Dowd Jr. rejected her recommendation and handed down summary judgment embracing Marsh.
Judges Gilman and Cole said the magistrate was correct.
Dissenting Judge James L. Ryan followed Marsh, which allows prayer in legislative bodies and such “other deliberative public bodies” as school boards.
That's wrong, too, Judge Gilman responded.
School boards are not just another deliberative public body, he wrote, because they are “inextricably intertwined with the public schools.”
Judge Gilman said that critical difference “serves to remove it from the logic in Marsh and to place it squarely within” Supreme Court decisions barring mandated prayer in class and at school events.
In that sense, Judge Gilman continued, school board meetings are a perfect fit because they are conducted by school officials on school property and often are attended by students.
He wrote that students summoned to school board meetings — for honors or discipline — become a captive audience, and those meetings “are far more coercive than graduation ceremonies,” where officially sponsored opening prayers are banned.
Thursday's ruling in the Cleveland case was a victory for former student Sarah Coles and teacher Gene Tracy.
Cleveland board attorney Richard Knoth said the decision whether to appeal further lies with the financially troubled district.
Enquirer reporter Andrea Tortora contributed to this article.
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