Opinion ID: 515250
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The School District's Arguments

Text: 23 The School District sets forth several arguments for distinguishing school prayer cases, claiming that these distinctions permit a finding that religious invocations at high school football games are constitutional. The School District first argues that the school prayer cases are not implicated here because pregame invocations occur outside the instructional environment of the classroom. This argument is meritless. Even though not occurring in the classroom, the invocations take place at a school-owned stadium during a school-sponsored event. In Doe v. Aldine Ind. School Dist., 563 F.Supp. 883 (S.D.Tex.1982), the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas rejected the argument that the School District asserts here. In Doe, a public high school sponsored extracurricular activities at which a prayer was sung. The defendants argued that the prayer did not violate the Establishment Clause because it occurred outside the classroom. The Doe court rejected this argument: 24 Pep rallies, football games, and graduation ceremonies are considered to be an integral part of the school's extracurricular program and as such provide a powerful incentive for students to attend.... [I]t is the Texas compulsory education machinery that draws the students to the school event and provides any audience at all for the religious activities.... Since these extracurricular activities were school sponsored and so closely identified with the school program, the fact that the religious activity took place in a nonreligious setting might create in a student's mind the impression that the state's attitude toward religion lacks neutrality. 25 Id. at 887 (citation omitted). The Doe court's reasoning applies equally well in the present case. 26 The School District next contends that football invocations do not invoke the teacher-student relationship, and are directed to a far less impressionable audience of adults and sixteen-to-eighteen year olds. However, the equal access plan does permit teachers to deliver religious invocations, thereby impacting on the teacher-student relationship. Furthermore, to persons of any age who do not believe in prayer, religious invocations permitted by the equal access plan convey the message that the state endorses religions believing in prayer and denigrates those religions that do not. If these prayers are delivered by authority figures, such as teachers, as is possible under the equal access plan, the message endorsing prayer becomes even stronger. 27 The School District argues further that the invocations are constitutional because they are given at public events at which attendance is entirely voluntary. Courts upholding invocations at graduation ceremonies have stressed that attendance is voluntary. See, e.g., Wood v. Mt. Lebanon Township School Dist., 342 F.Supp. 1293, 1294 (W.D.Pa.1972). However, the Supreme Court and this Court have not held that public prayer becomes constitutional when student participation is purely voluntary. See Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 430, 82 S.Ct. 1261, 1266-67, 8 L.Ed.2d 601 (1962) (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); see also Karen B. v. Treen, 653 F.2d at 902. The School District attempts to distinguish these cases on the ground that they involved students who were compelled by law to be in attendance in the classrooms where prayer took place. The School District suggests that, because attendance at football games is voluntary, a constitutional violation is avoided. This argument lacks merit because whether the complaining individual's presence was voluntary is not relevant to the Establishment Clause analysis. Bell v. Little Axe Ind. School Dist. No. 70, 766 F.2d 1391, 1405 (10th Cir.1985). The Establishment Clause focuses on the constitutionality of the state action, not on the choices made by the complaining individual. 28 The School District's final attempt to distinguish the school prayer cases centers on the contention that the invocations constitute a de minimis violation of the Establishment Clause because they last 60 to 90 seconds. See Grossberg v. Deusebio, 380 F.Supp. 285, 290 (E.D.Va.1974) (no Establishment Clause violation from the brief periods allotted to the invocation and benediction contemplated as part of the graduation ceremony). This approach is flawed. It is no defense to urge that the religious practices here may be relatively minor encroachments on the First Amendment. Schempp, 374 U.S. at 225, 83 S.Ct. at 1573. The Establishment Clause does not focus on the amount of time an activity takes, but rather examines the religious character of the activity. See Hall v. Bradshaw, 630 F.2d 1018, 1021 (4th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 965, 101 S.Ct. 1480, 67 L.Ed.2d 613 (1981). As the Fourth Circuit recognized in Bradshaw, [a] prayer, because it is religious, does advance religion, and the limited nature of the encroachment does not free the state from the limitations of the Establishment Clause. Id. at 1021. 29 None of the arguments offered by the School District are persuasive in the present case. Each alleged distinction overlooks the single fact that a state or its subdivision cannot endorse or advance religion. Nor can a state use religious means to achieve secular purposes where, as here, secular means exist to achieve those purposes. 30 In short, the equal access plan is unconstitutional because it has a religious purpose and a primary effect of advancing religion. By using a purely secular invocation, the School District could avoid any problems of entanglement, fulfill its secular purposes, and not advance religion, thereby complying with the requirements of Lemon and its progeny. Because the School District rejected the alternative of a purely secular pregame speech, and instead adopted a plan which fails to satisfy the Lemon test, we hold that the equal access plan is unconstitutional on its face. 31