WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday soundly rejected student-led prayers in the public schools, insisting again that the Constitution demands a strict separation of church and state.
Students may pray privately on their own or with friends before, during or after school, the justices said. But school officials cross the line when they sponsor a group prayer or encourage a student to deliver a religious message at a school event.
Monday's 6-3 ruling struck down a Texas school board's policy of allowing students to decide, by majority vote, whether to have a student-led "invocation" at football games, graduations and other school gatherings.
The decision halts a movement by Christian legal activists to convert the school prayer issue into one of free speech for students.
Across the country, and particularly in the South, public schools increasingly have allowed students to give invocations and prayers at graduations and other ceremonies.
This practice differs from the official prayers that have been outlawed since 1962, they argued, because the words come from the students, not adult school employees.
Polls show that most Americans support a return to prayer in school. As if to highlight the point, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, filed a brief supporting the Texas school board and arguing that students had a free-speech right to voice their religious beliefs.
But the Supreme Court has refused to budge on the issue of school prayer, and it rejected student-led invocations Monday in a surprisingly broad opinion.
Not everyone favors Christian prayer, and school officials have no business favoring it either, the justices said.
"The religious liberty protected by the Constitution is abridged when the state affirmatively sponsors the particular religious practice of prayer," Justice John Paul Stevens said.
At school-sponsored events, student-led prayers amount to the public promotion of religion, not a private act of worship, Stevens added in Santa Fe Independent School District vs. Doe, 99-62.
Bush said he was disappointed in the outcome. "I thought voluntary, student-led prayer at extracurricular events was right," he said after a campaign event in Vancouver, Wash.
The case decided Monday came from Santa Fe, Texas, a small and strongly Baptist community along the Gulf Coast.
