Protecting the 'inviolable citadel of the heart': the Supreme Court's decisions on religion and public schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court's rulings on religion and public education have been among its most controversial. Since the McCollum v. Board of Education verdict in 1948, the high court has rendered only nine opinions on the role of faith in the classroom.

Religious Right groups often a accuse the high court of manifesting hostility toward religion, In fact, the justices have often gone out of their way to emphasize that church-state separation ensures the independence and integrity of religion and protects the right of all Americans to make their own decisions about religion free of government mandate.

Here is a summary of the cases with excerpts from the majority opinions:

* McCollum v. Board of Education (1948): The high court, in an 8-1 decision, declared unconstitutional a released-time program in Champaign, Ill., that brought clergy and others into the public schools to offer sectarian religious instruction.

Justice Hugo L. Black wrote: "To hold that a state cannot consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments utilize its public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines and ideas does not, as counsel urge, manifest a governmental hostility to religion or religious teachings. A manifestation of such hostility would be at war with our national tradition as embodied in the First Amendment's quarantee of the free exercise of religion. For the First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. Or, as we said in the [1947] Everson case, the First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable."

* Zorach v. Clauson (1952): The court, by a 6-3 vote, upheld a released-time program in New York City that allowed students to leave the public schools during the day for religious training off-site.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote: "Government may not finance religious groups nor undertake religious instruction nor blend secular and sectarian education nor use secular institutions to force one or some religion on any person. But we find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence."

* Engel v. Vitale (1962): In a 6-1 decision, the Supreme Court decided that state-sponsored recitation of the "Regents Prayer" by students enrolled at the New Hyde Park, N.Y., School District was unconstitutional.

Justice Hugo L. Black wrote: "When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular form of religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purpose underlying the Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment] 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.... The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its `unhallowed perversion' by a civil magistrate."

* Abington Township School District v. Schempp (1963): By a 7-1 vote, the high court struck down laws in Pennsylvania and Maryland requiring public school students to recite the Lord's Prayer and read Bible passages every day.

Justice Tom. C. Clark wrote: "The place of religion in our society is an exalted one, achieved through a long tradition of reliance on the home, the church and the inviolable citadel of the individual heart and mind. We have come to recognize through bitter experience that it is not within the power of government to invade that citadel, whether its purpose or effect be to aid or oppose, to advance or retard. In the relationship between man and religion, the State is firmly committed to a position of neutrality."

* Epperson v. Arkansas (1968): The court unanimously struck down an Arkansas law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public universities and secondary schools.

Justice Abe Fortas wrote: "Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite .... While study of religions and of the Bible from a literary and historic viewpoint, presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, need not collide with the First Amendment's prohibition, the State may not adopt programs or practices in its public schools or colleges which 'aid or oppose' any religion. This prohibition is absolute. It forbids alike the preference of a religious doctrine or the prohibition of theory which is deemed antagonistic to a particular dogma."

* Stone v. Graham (1980): With two justices dissenting, the high court declared unconstitutional a Kentucky law requiring public schools to post privately funded copies of the Ten Commandments in each classroom.

In an unsigned per curiam (by the court) opinion, the court majority wrote: "The pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature. The Ten Commandments is undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact. The Commandments do not confine themselves to arguably secular matters, such as honoring one's parents, killing or murder, adultery, stealing, false witness and covetousness. Rather, the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord's name in vain and observing the sabbath day.

"This is not a case in which the Ten Commandments are integrated into the school curriculum, where the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like."

* Wallace v. Jaffree (1985): The high court voted 6-3 to strike down an Alabama law requiring public schools to set aside a moment of silence for meditation or prayer.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: "Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom of mind, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. At one time it was thought that this fight merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Mohammedism or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all. This conclusion derives support not only from the interest in respecting the individual's freedom of conscience, but also from the conviction that religious beliefs worthy of respect are the product of free and voluntary choice by the faithful."

* Edwards v. Aguillard (1987): This 7-2 decision invalidated a Louisiana law requiring public schools to offer "balanced treatment" between evolution and creationism.

Justice William J. Brennan wrote: "Families entrust public schools with the education of their children, but condition that trust on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used to advance religious views that may conflict with the private beliefs of the student and his or her family."

* Board of Education v. Mergens (1990): The Supreme Court by an 8-1 vote upheld a federal law requiring public secondary schools to allow student-led religious clubs to meet on campus if other clubs not related to curriculum are meeting.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote: "[T]here is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion; which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect. We think that secondary school students are mature enough and are likely to understand that a school does not endorse or support student speech that it merely permits on a nondiscriminatory basis."

* Lee v. Weisman (1992): In its most recent case dealing with school prayer, the court ruled 5-4 that public schools may not sponsor invocations at graduation ceremonies.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote: "The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State. The design of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten then, that while concern must be given to define the protection granted to an objector of a dissenting nonbeliever, these same [Religion] Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference. James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was: `[E]xperience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation.'"