Engel v Vitale

11 Key excerpts on "Engel v Vitale"

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  Landmark Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court

  • James Daley(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Dover Publications

    (Publisher)

  Engel v. Vitale

  1962

  In 1951 the New York State Board of Regents authorized a brief, “nondenominational” prayer to be included in the opening ceremonies of all New York public schools. Though the prayer was nondenominational and optional, parents of ten children in New Hyde Park, New York, objected to its use of the phrase “Almighty God.” In an attempt to stop the prayer, these parents filed suit against their school board president, William Vitale, and the New York State Board of Regents, claiming that such a practice contradicted their beliefs and violated the First Amendment. After losing their case in the trial court of New York, the parents appealed unsuccessfully to both the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals of New York, before finally bringing their suit to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Led by Justice Hugo Black, the Supreme Court found that the state-sponsored twenty-two-word prayer was in fact a religious activity, and thus a violation of the First Amendment’s ban against the establishment of a religion. Although there was an intense firestorm of criticism from the public in response to this decision, the precedent set by Engel v. Vitale has remained intact to this day.

  U.S. SUPREME COURT

  ENGEL V. VITALE, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)

  370 U.S. 421

  ENGEL ET AL. V. VITALE ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS OF NEW YORK. No. 468. Argued April 3, 1962. Decided June 25, 1962.

   

  BECAUSE of the prohibition of the First Amendment against the enactment of any law “respecting an establishment of religion,” which is made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, state officials may not compose an official state prayer and require that it be recited in the public schools of the State at the beginning of each school day—even if the prayer is denominationally neutral and pupils who wish to do so may remain silent or be excused from the room while the prayer is being recited. Pp. 422–436.

  10 N. Y. 2d 174, 176 N. E. 2d 579, reversed. William J. Butler argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs was Stanley Geller.

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  The Supreme Court and American Democracy

  Case Studies on Judicial Review and Public Policy

  • Earl Pollock(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  That fact, combined with the use to which these dollars will be put, exacerbates the conflict problem. I do not believe that the “parental choice” aspect of the voucher program sufficiently offsets these concerns. The Court, in effect, turns the clock back. This departure risks creating a form of religiously based conflict potentially harmful to the nation’s social fabric. ***** [Note: In January 2006, the Florida Supreme Court held that a Florida voucher pro- gram violated this provision of the Florida State Constitution: “Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools.”] 238 The Supreme Court and American Democracy Prayer in Public Schools Except for the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, probably no decision in the history of the Supreme Court (even Brown v. Board of Education) has sparked the same national uproar as Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1961). 7 At issue in the Engel case was the constitutionality of a school board’s direction that each class at the beginning of each school day should recite a brief prayer composed by the New York State Board of Regents: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our depen- dence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our Country.” Although the prayer was nondenominational in nature, and although stu- dents who wished to do so could remain silent or be excused from the room while the prayer was being recited, the Court (6-1, Frankfurter and White not participating) held that the policy violated the Establishment Clause. In an opinion by Justice Black (who had also authored the Everson opinion), the Court stated: [B]y 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.

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  Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics

  • Jeffrey Schultz, John G. West, Iain Maclean, Jeffrey Schultz, John G. West, Iain Maclean(Authors)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  Justice Hugo Black wrote the opinion for the Court and argued that the Establishment Clause forbids prayers "com- posed by government officials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs." His opinion included an eloquent defense of religious freedom and a condemnation of past religious persecution, but it is weaker when it seeks to apply the principles garnered from that history to the inclu- sive—some would say innocuous—prayer at issue in this case, a prayer that the New York authorities sought to make volun- tary by allowing children not to participate. Justice Potter Stewart dissented, arguing that no official religion is estab- lished by "letting those who want to say a prayer say it." This case gained in significance the following year when its basic reasoning was used to hold that reciting the Lord's Prayer and reading from the Bible without comment were also unconstitutional {Abington Township v. Schempp). Public opinion polls show that clear majorities of the public favor some form of prayer in the public schools; presi- dential candidates regularly are forced to take stands on the issue, and each session of Congress struggles over proposed amendments to the Constitution designed to allow school prayer. To date, proposed amendments have failed to gain the required two-thirds majority in both houses. (SM) BIBLIOGRAPHY Pleffer, Leo. "The New York Regents' Prayer Case {Engel vs. Vitale)'. Its Background, Meaning and Implications." CLSA Reports. New York: Commission on Law and Social Action of the American Jewish Congress, 1962. . Prayer in Public Schools and the Constitution, 1961-1992. Controversies in Constitutional Law. New York: Garland Pub- lishing, 1993. Enlightenment The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century movement that sought to redefine thinking about politics and religion.

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  Religion and the Law in America

  An Encyclopedia of Personal Belief and Public Policy [2 volumes]

  • Scott A. Merriman(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Some of the moment of silence legislation has come closer to promot- ing prayer, in many people’s eyes, than others, and it was one of these cases that made it to the Supreme Court in 1985 in Wallace v. Jaf- free. That case challenged legislation written in 1978 and amended in 1982 to change it from being legislation just allowing a moment of si- lence to one allowing that moment for “si- lence or prayer.” The Supreme Court struck this amended law down as an endorsement of religion.Another issue of prayer is prayer at in- dividual events, such as football games and graduations. Courts have divided on whether a prayer at a football game is constitutional, but in 1992 the Supreme Court struck down a prayer at a graduation. Thus, in general, the Court continues to follow the line of thought begun in Engel, that prayer at school functions and in the school day is generally unaccept- able, but this has not ended criticism of that decision, nor has it ended attempts by politi- cians to allow prayer in schools. Nor will the Engel decision end the continuation of all three of these trends for the foreseeable future. See also ACLU of Kentucky v. McCreary County; Lee v. Weisman; McCreary County v. ACLU; Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe; School District of Abington Township v. Schempp; Wallace v. Jaffree For further reading DelFattore, Joan. 2004. The Fourth R: Conflicts over Religion in America’s Public Schools. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fraser, James W. 1999. Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Greenawalt, Kent. 2005. Does God Belong in Public Schools? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Haas, Carol. 1994. Engel v.Vitale: Separation of Church and State. Hillside, NJ: Enslow. Sears, James T., with James C. Carper, eds. 1998. Curriculum, Religion, and Public Education: Con- versations for an Enlarging Public Square.

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  The Government's Speech and the Constitution

  • Helen Norton(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  These include governmental decisionmakers’ descriptions of their own motives, the historical background and specific series of events leading up to the government’s expressive choice, and the availability of other explanations for the government’s choice. The Supreme Court first applied the neutrality principle to the government’s religious speech in the 1960s. Engel v. Vitale involved an Establishment Clause challenge brought by parents who objected to their local school board’s choice to start the school day with a prayer composed by the New York State Board of Regents: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.” 45 The Court found that the board sought to advance religion with its expressive choice, and thus held that it violated the Clause apart from any coercive effect (the school board’s policy permitted students who objected to the prayer to remain silent or be excused): When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing official approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. 46 44 Note that both the nonendorsement principle and the neutrality principle might be understood as parts of, or refinements to, the test for Establishment Clause violations more generally announced in Lemon v.

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  Secular Government, Religious People

  • Ira C. Lupu, Robert W. Tuttle(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Eerdmans

    (Publisher)

  18 Here we see the early invocation of a jurisdictional theory of the sort advanced in chapter 1. The Court recognized that the family, and not the state, is the primary source of authority in the religious formation of children.

  And in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 19 which in 1943 eliminated compulsory saluting of the American flag by children in the public schools, the Court took yet another dramatic step toward limiting any totalitarian pretensions of the state, even in a time of world war. Justice Jackson’s most famous pronouncement in Barnette would echo twenty years later when the first school prayer case came before the Supreme Court: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”20 The language of Barnette’ s operative prohibition — “no official . . . can . . . force citizens to confess by word or act their faith [in state-­imposed orthodoxy]” — resonates powerfully with our thesis that the state lacks political authority over the subject of belief in a deity or other ultimate concern.

  The School Prayer Cases

  Engel v. Vitale (1962)21 and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963)22 are the two most famous Establishment Clause decisions in Supreme Court history. High school students studying American government or history are likely to learn of these decisions, and to appreciate that they represent a watershed in the American constitutional ethos.23

  The long-­simmering tensions between Protestants and Catholics over the financing and content of public education provide the oft-­overlooked backdrop for the decisions.24 Justice Black, who wrote for the Court in Engel, had also written the opinion fifteen years earlier in Everson,

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  Constitutional Debates on Freedom of Religion

  A Documentary History

  • Gerald Long, John J. Patrick(Authors)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  The Supreme Court’s holding in Schempp and a companion case that had originated in Baltimore, Maryland, came just one year after the Court had addressed the issue of school prayer in Engel v. Vitale (see Document 51). As in the Engel case, the participation of any given student was not compulsory. Unlike Engel, however, the words in question in Schempp had not been authored by the state. In an 8–1 decision the Supreme Court ruled that the Pennsylvania statute was an unconstitutional violation of the establishment clause, which is applicable to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Tom C. Clark, writing for the majority, postulated that a Bible reading was clearly a religious exercise and, as such, was in contradiction of the neutrality standard that each state is required to uphold. Most important, Justice Clark formulated a two-part test that could be used in subsequent cases to measure the contents of a statute or action against the dictates of the establishment clause. First, according to Clark, if a law is to be regarded as constitutional it must exhibit a valid secular purpose. Second, the primary effect of the law should not be to advance or inhibit religion. As in Engel, the lone dissent in Schempp was authored by Justice Potter Stewart. He viewed the Bible reading activity as permissible un- der the free exercise of religion clause which is also contained in the First Amendment. A denial of this activity, according to Stewart, would be emblematic of a hostility toward religion, and not neutrality. Justice 166 Constitutional Debates on Freedom of Religion Clark, on the other hand, asserted that the majority in this instance is not free to impose its beliefs on religious minorities. Why did Justice Clark view the Pennsylvania statute as unconstitu- tional even though participation was optional? According to Justice Stewart, what would constitute coercion on the part of the state re- garding the promulgation of religious beliefs? * * * MR.

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  Public Attitudes Toward Church and State

  • Clyde Wilcox, Ted G. Jelen(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 Religion, Politics, and the Constitution

  In the summer of 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a New York state school district created for the benefit of the disabled children of Hasidic Jews was unconstitutional. In a 6-3 vote, the Court ruled in Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet that such a school district violated the establishment clause of the Constitution (Biskupic 1994; Greenhouse 1994). Writing for the Court's majority, David Souter wrote that the legislature had created "a fusion of governmental and religious functions" and that government is required to demonstrate "'neutrality' among religions" (Biskupic 1994, Al). Souter argued that the establishment clause requires that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion" (Greenhouse 1994, Al).

  In a bitmg dissent, Antonin Scalia mocked Souter's reasoning, arguing: "The Court today finds that the Powers that be, up in Albany, have conspired to affect an establishment of the Satmar Hasidim... The Founding Fathers would be astonished to find that ... the Court has abandoned text and history as guides ... [and] nothing prevents it from calling religious toleration the establishment of religion" (Greenhouse 1994, D22).

  In response to Scalia's dissent, Souter replied: "The license he [Scalia] takes in suggesting that the Court holds the Satmar sect to be New York's established church is only one symptom of his inability to accept the fact that this Court has long held that the First Amendment reaches more than classic, 18th-century establishments" (Greenhouse 1994, D21).

  This unusually personal exchange between Supreme Court justices illustrates clearly that protagonists in the debate over the proper relationship between religion and government disagree fundamentally on a variety of issues. What is ultimately at stake are the meaning of the First Amendment to the Constitution and the proper role of religion in American public life. Such issues clearly have the capacity to provoke intensive, hyperbolic reactions and rhetoric. For more than half a century, the manner in which Americans "render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's" (Matt. 22:21) has been a rich source of political and legal conflict in the United States.

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  Church-State Issues in America Today

  [3 volumes]

  • Ann W. Duncan, Steven L. Jones, Ann W. Duncan, Steven L. Jones(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  63 The parents argued that the New York public school system violated the Establishment Clause by directing students to participate in a religious activity. 64 The Supreme Court agreed. 65 The nature of the prayer was religious, and the government had composed and endorsed the activity. 66 The statute “breach[ed] the wall of separation between church and state.” 67 The Court emphasized the need for church and state to remain separate in light of the historical reasons that “our early colonists [left] England Historical Perspectives on Church and State • 51 and [sought] religious freedom in America.” 68 Religious groups lacking the political power necessary to affect governmental decisions regarding church and state matters have historically faced political discrimination. 69 The First Amendment was created to “guarantee that neither the power nor the pres- tige of Federal Government would be used to control, support, or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say.” 70 Because religion is per- sonal, sacred, and holy, to permit a civil magistrate to direct its meaning and application could pervert it with political power and coercion and con- tradict the purposes of the Establishment Clause. 71 While the public school prayer did not amount to a total endorsement of one religion, the Court recognized the historical dangers of governmental encroachment of religion and held that the statute was unconstitutional. 72 The Court concluded by quoting James Madison: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?” 73 Justice Stewart dissented and argued against such a strict interpretation of the Establishment Clause.

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  Conscience and Belief: The Supreme Court and Religion

  The Supreme Court in American Society

  • Kermit L. Hall(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  A. Legislative Purpose and the Relationship Between Religion and Politics B. The Political Activity of Religious Groups and the Rigor of Judicial Review Conclusion

  Introduction

  Virtually every term, the United States Supreme Court decides at least one case challenging the action of a federal, state or local government as violating the establishment clause of the Federal Constitution. That clause prohibits Congress from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”1 The Court has extended the proscription to state and local governments as well as the federal government2 and to executives as well as legislatures.3 Many, if not most, of the cases have arisen in educational settings, as challenges either to religious activities in public schools4 or to provision of financial or other aid to parochial education.5

  In its establishment clause decisions, the Court intends to enforce governmental neutrality toward religion and among religious groups.6 It has adopted two conceptions of neutrality: that governments should remain separate from religion and religious institutions,7 and that governments should treat religious and similarly situated non-religious institutions or activities equally.8 From these two competing conceptions of neutrality, the Court has fashioned a three-part test first enunciated sixteen years ago in Lemon v. Kurtzman. 9 To be valid, an act must have a secular purpose, its principal effect must neither advance nor inhibit religion, and it must not foster excessive governmental entanglement with religion.10 This standard creates one of the Court’s strictest constitutional tests.11

  This article argues that neither the separation nor the equal treatment conception engenders neutrality, at least in the context of education. In fact, neutrality is impossible.12

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  Democracy and Religion

  Free Exercise and Diverse Visions

  • David Odell-Scott(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • The Kent State University Press

    (Publisher)

  Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), and Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963).

  2 . Santa Fe v. Doe, 530 U.S. 27 (2002).

  3 . For a discussion of the Ten Commandments in public life, see Derek H. Davis, “The Ten Commandments as Public Ritual,” Journal of Church and State 44 (Spring 2002): 221.

  4 . The “separation” principle is explained in a wide range of ways. Those who see separation as requiring only the prohibition against a national church, thus allowing for broader governmental advancement of religion, are often called accommodationists. Those who argue for more extensive prohibitions of governmental support of religion are frequently referred to as separationists. Among the best works presenting accommodationists’ interpretations are Chester James Antieu, Arthur L. Downey, and Edward C. Roberts, Freedom from Federal Establishment: Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religions Clauses (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce, 1964); Walter Berns, The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (New York: Basic, 1976); Michael J. Malbin, Religion and Politics: The Intentions of the Authors of the First Amendment (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978); and Robert L. Cord, Separation of Church and State: Historical Fact and Current Fiction (New York: Lambeth, 1982). Among the best works with separationist stances are Leo Pfeffer, Church, State and Freedom, 2d ed. (Boston, Mass.: Beacon, 1967); Leonard Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York: Macmillan, 1986); Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States: Historical Development and Contemporary Problems of Religious Freedom under the Constitution, 3 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950); and Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case against Religious Correctness (New York: Norton, 1996).

  5 . Abington v. Schempp , 225.

  6 . Board of Education v. Allen,

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