Engel et al v. Vitale et al

Notable Items:

Issue(s) Before the Court:

Petitioner's Claim(s):

Respondent's Claim(s):

Holding(s) and Disposition:

Material Facts:

• A full recounting of the facts is available below

Procedural History:

• The New York Court of Appeals ... sustained an order of the lower state courts which had upheld the power of New York to use the Regents' prayer as a part of the daily procedures of its public schools so long as the schools did not compel any pupil to join in the prayer over his or his parents' objection. (423)

Rationale

Black Majority Opinion (Brennan, Clark, Douglas, Harlan, Warren)

• The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say .... (429) [emphasis added]
• Neither the fact that the prayer may be denominationally neutral nor the fact that its observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the Establishment Clause ...
• Its [Establishment Clause] first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. (431) [emphasis added]
• Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. (432) [emphasis added]
• The New York laws officially prescribing the Regents' prayer are inconsistent both with the purposes of the Establishment Clause and with the Establishment Clause itself. (433)
• A full description of the rationale is available below

Douglas Concurrance ()

• The point for decision is whether the Government can constitutionally finance a religious exercise. (437)
• Our system at the federal and state levels is presently honeycombed with such financing.
• First, a word as to what this case does not involve.
• No student, however, is compelled to take part.
• McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U. S. 203, does not decide this case. It involved the use of public school facilities for religious education of students. (439)
• In the present case, school facilities are used to say the prayer and the teaching staff is employed to lead the pupils in it. [compare Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) ]
• There is, however, no effort at indoctrination and no attempt at exposition.
• The question presented by this case is therefore an extremely narrow one. It is whether New York oversteps the bounds when it finances a religious exercise. [emphasis added]
• What New York does on the opening of its public schools is what we do when we open court. Our Crier has from the beginning announced the convening of the Court and then added "God save the United States and this Honorable Court."
• What New York does on the opening of its public schools is what each House of Congress does at the opening of each day's business.
• ... in each of the instances given the person praying is a public official on the public payroll, performing a religious exercise in a governmental institution. (441)
• At the same time I cannot say that to authorize this prayer is to establish a religion in the strictly historic meaning of those words. (442)
• My problem today would be uncomplicated but for Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 17, which allowed taxpayers' money to be used to pay "the bus fares of parochial school pupils as a part of a general program under which" the fares of pupils attending public and other schools were also paid. (443)
• The Everson case seems in retrospect to be out of line with the First Amendment.
• Yet by the same token, public funds could be used to satisfy other needs of children in parochial schools--lunches, books, and tuition being obvious examples.
• "There cannot be freedom of religion, safeguarded by the state, and intervention by the church or its agencies in the state's domain or dependency on its largesse." [Rutledge dissenting in Everson v. Board of Education summarizing Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments.] (444)
• What New York does with this prayer is a break with that tradition. I.therefore join the Court in reversing the judgment below.

Stewart Dissent (444)

• The Court today decides that in permitting this brief nondenominational prayer the school board has violated the Constitution of the United States. (445)
• I think this decision is wrong.
• But the Court says that in permitting school children to say this simple prayer, the New York authorities have established "an official religion."
• I cannot see how an "official religion" is established by letting those who want to say a prayer say it. [ignores the state role in drafting, disseminating, and requiring prayer before class]
• What is relevant to the issue here is ... the history of the religious traditions of our people, reflected in countless practices of the institutions and officials of our government. (446)
• At the opening of each day's Session of this Court we stand, while one of our officials invokes the protection of God.
• Both the Senate and the House of Representatives open their daily Sessions with prayer.
• Each of our Presidents ... has upon assuming his Office asked the protection and help of God.
• [additional examples of governmental religious speech]
• [omitted clergy at Constitutional Convention]
• [All examples were begun prior to discussion, consideration, and ratification of the First Amendment]
• [Footnote 9:] I am at a loss to understand the Court's unsupported ipse dixit that these official expressions of religious faith in and reliance upon a Supreme Being "bear no true resemblance to the unquestioned religious exercise that the State of New York has sponsored in this instance."
• I do not believe that this Court, or the Congress, or the President has by the actions and practices I have mentioned established an "official religion" in violation of the Constitution. (450)
• And I do not believe the State of New York has done so in this case.
• What each has done has been to recognize and to follow the deeply entrenched and highly cherished spiritual traditions of our Nation ....
• I dissent.

Full Recounting of Facts

• The Board of Education of Union Free School District No. 9, New Hyde Park, New York ... directed ... the following prayer to be said aloud by each class in the presence of a teacher at the beginning of each school day: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country." (422)
• This daily procedure was adopted on the recommendation of the State Board of Regents ....
• Shortly after the practice of reciting the Regents' prayer was adopted by the School District, the parents of ten pupils brought this action in a New York State Court insisting that use of this official prayer in the public schools was contrary to the beliefs, religions, or religious practices of both themselves and their children. (423)
• ... these parents challenged the constitutionality of both the state law authorizing ... and the ... regulation ordering the recitation on the ground that these actions ... violate that part of the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution which commands that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ....
• A list of the material facts is available above

Black Majority Full Argument (Brennan, Clark, Douglas, Harlan, Warren)

• See Material Facts
• See Procedural History
• We think that by using its public school system to encourage recitation of the Regents' prayer, the State of New York has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause. (425) [emphasis added]
• There can, of course, be no doubt that New York's program of daily classroom invocation of God's blessings as prescribed in the Regents' prayer is a religious activity. [emphasis added]
• The nature of such a prayer has always been religious, none of the respondents has denied this and the trial court expressly so found .... [emphasis added]
• ... we think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that in this country 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. [emphasis added]
• [review of conflicts over English Book of Common Prayer and flight to North America by dissenters.]
• [History Lesson]
• It is an unfortunate fact of history that when some of the very groups which had most strenuously opposed the established Church of England found themselves sufficiently in control of colonial governments in this country to write their own prayers into law, they passed laws making their own religion the official religion of their respective colonies. (427)
• Indeed, as late as the time of the Revolutionary War, there were established churches in at least eight of the thirteen former colonies and established religions in at least four of the other five.
• By the time of the adoption of the Constitution, our history shows that there was a widespread awareness among many Americans of the dangers of a union of Church and State. (429)
• They knew the anguish, hardship and bitter strife that could come when zealous religious groups struggled with one another ....
• The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say (429)
• ... reinforced by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country, be it state or federal, is without power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as an official prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally sponsored religious activity. (430) [emphasis added]
• [Unconstitutionality of Government Sponsored Religious Activity]
• The respondents' argument to the contrary, ... ignores the essential nature of the program's constitutional defects. (430)
• Neither the fact that the prayer may be denominationally neutral nor the fact that its observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the Establishment Clause ...
• The Establishment Clause, ... does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion ....
• Its [Establishment Clause] first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. (431) [emphasis added]
• Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. (432) [emphasis added]
• The New York laws officially prescribing the Regents' prayer are inconsistent both with the purposes of the Establishment Clause and with the Establishment Clause itself. (433)
• It has been argued that to apply the Constitution in such a way as to prohibit state laws respecting an establishment of religious services in public schools is to indicate a hostility toward religion or toward prayer. Nothing, of course, could be more wrong. [emphasis added]
• It is neither sacrilegious nor antireligious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance. (436)
• It is true that New York's establishment of its Regents' prayer ... does not amount to a total establishment of one particular religious sect to the exclusion of all others .... (436)
• Madison, the author of the First Amendment: [I]t is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties....
• The core of the rationale is available above