School Prayer, Bibles and the Ten Commandments, Eleven Questions Answered

Students have been praying silently before math tests since the invention of math tests, and no Supreme Court decision has ever touched it. Keep that in mind the next time somebody tells you God was banned from the public schools. A ban that cannot reach a nervous sophomore with a pencil is a strange kind of ban.

The slogan survives because it contains a grain of truth, and the grain is worth separating from the chaff. The Supreme Court did rule against school-sponsored prayer and devotional Bible reading in the early 1960s. It did not rule against students, and in the sixty years since, the Court has repeatedly protected religious expression by students, clubs and, most recently, a coach. If you're a parent, a teacher or a student trying to figure out what the rules are, the following eleven questions are the ones people actually ask. The answers are plain and tied to the cases. This is general information, not legal advice for your situation.

The two clauses in one minute

The First Amendment's religion language has two halves that pull in different directions, and nearly every school case is a dispute over which half is in charge. The Establishment Clause says the government may not set up or promote a religion. The Free Exercise Clause says the government may not stop you from practicing yours. A public school is the government, and a student is a citizen. Keep both facts in your head and most of the answers below will feel obvious.

The rulings that started it

1. Was God banned from public schools?

No. What the Supreme Court ruled out was government-sponsored religious exercise: prayers written or led by school officials, and devotional Bible readings conducted as part of the school day. The cases are Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), taken up below. The Court did not forbid private religious expression by students, and it has said so in later cases.

The line the Court drew is between the school as an arm of the state, which may not promote a religion, and a student as a citizen, who may exercise one. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Both clauses matter. The Establishment Clause restrains the school. The Free Exercise Clause protects the student. For a larger treatment of the history, see where 'a wall of separation' really comes from and what it was built for.

2. What did Engel v. Vitale actually decide?

In Engel, the New York State Board of Regents had composed a short, nondenominational prayer and recommended that schools recite it at the start of each day. Students who objected could stay silent or leave the room. The Court, in an opinion by Justice Hugo Black, held in 1962 that the practice violated the Establishment Clause. It did not matter that the prayer was brief, that it did not favor a denomination, or that participation was voluntary. The vice was that government officials wrote a prayer and had public school teachers lead it.

That's the whole holding. Engel said nothing about a student praying on his own, and it did not say the Constitution forbids religion in public life. Justice Potter Stewart was the lone dissenter. The opinion's central idea, that a government has no business composing official prayers, is one many believers have defended on their own terms: a prayer written by a state board is a prayer nobody asked for.

3. Can a school read from the Bible?

The next year, in Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), the Court considered a Pennsylvania law requiring that each school day begin with the reading of ten verses from the Bible, and a Maryland practice of reading a chapter and reciting the Lord's Prayer. The Court struck them down by a wide margin, 8-1. These were religious exercises conducted by the school.

But the opinion, written by Justice Tom Clark, made a distinction that is routinely forgotten. It said that the Bible may be studied for its literary and historical qualities, and that the study of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, is consistent with the First Amendment. A school can offer a course on the Bible as literature, teach about the world's religions in a history class, or assign the Bible as part of a study of English literature. What it cannot do is use scripture as a devotional exercise. The word to remember is teach about, as distinct from practice.

What students and clubs may do

4. Can my child pray at school?

Yes. The rulings in Engel and Schempp limit what the school does, not what the student does. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Court said that students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. In practice, and within the school's ordinary neutral rules, students may generally:

• pray silently, or say grace over lunch, alone or in a group;
• read the Bible or other religious texts during free time, such as study hall;
• talk about their faith with classmates, within the same limits that apply to other conversation;
• wear religious jewelry and, in many cases, religious clothing, subject to generally applicable dress codes;
• express religious views in assignments and speeches, so long as they meet the academic requirements.

The Education Department issues guidance summarizing these points, and it is worth finding the current version and keeping a copy. A school that tells a student she cannot bow her head at lunch has made a mistake that the cases do not support.

5. What about a moment of silence?

In Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), the Court struck down an Alabama law that authorized a one-minute period of silence "for meditation or voluntary prayer." The reason was the law's purpose. The record showed that the legislature's sponsor intended to return prayer to the schools, and the Court held that the addition of the words "or voluntary prayer" served no secular purpose. The ruling was 6-3.

The Court did not hold that a moment of silence is unconstitutional in itself. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, concurring, suggested that a moment of silence law without the evidence of a religious purpose could pass, and many states have such laws. The practical rule is that a neutral moment of silence, open to any use a student wants to make of it, is on firmer ground than one designed to push prayer. Check your state's statute and the district's practice.

6. Are prayers at graduations and football games allowed?

Not when the school sponsors them. In Lee v. Weisman (1992), a middle school principal in Providence, Rhode Island, invited a rabbi to give an invocation at graduation and gave him guidelines for it. The Court held 5-4 that this violated the Establishment Clause because the state was directing a religious exercise in a setting where students felt pressure to participate. Justice Kennedy's opinion called this coercion.

In Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000), a Texas district had a policy in which students voted on whether to have an invocation before football games and elected a student to deliver it over the public address system. The Court held 6-3 that the policy was a school-sponsored religious exercise in disguise: the district set up the process, the message was delivered with the school's equipment at a school-sponsored event, and the vote guaranteed that minority views would be shut out.

Note what those cases do not reach. A student who speaks at graduation and chooses to include a religious reference in her own remarks stands on different ground than a prayer the school arranged. Courts have addressed it case by case, and the outcome depends on whether the speech is the student's own or the school's. The safe course for a school is to avoid editing the student's message either way.

7. Can students start a Bible club?

Yes, and Congress wrote a law for it. The Equal Access Act of 1984 provides that a public secondary school that receives federal funds and allows non-curriculum student groups to meet on school premises during non-instructional time cannot deny equal access to a group because of the religious, political or philosophical content of its speech. The meetings must be voluntary and student-initiated, the school may not sponsor them, and school employees may attend only as monitors.

The Supreme Court upheld the Act in Westside Community Board of Education v. Mergens (1990), by 8-1. Students at Westside High School in Omaha, Nebraska, had asked to form a Christian club, and the school said no, although it allowed other non-curriculum clubs such as a chess club and a scuba club. The Court held that the school had to treat the Christian club like the others, and that doing so did not endorse religion. The student-led Bible club is one of the best examples of the principle that equal treatment, not hostility and not favoritism, is what the Constitution asks.

8. Can a church or outside group use the school after hours?

If the school opens its rooms to community groups, it cannot shut out a group because it is religious. In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District (1993), the Court unanimously held that a district that allowed community groups to use its facilities after hours for social, civic and recreational purposes could not bar a church from showing a film series on family values. In Good News Club v. Milford Central School (2001), the Court, 6-3, held that a school could not exclude a children's Bible club from meeting in the building after school hours when it let other groups with a similar purpose, like scouting, use the space. The exclusion was viewpoint discrimination, the Court said, and permitting the club would not amount to an endorsement.

This is why churches that rent school gyms and cafeterias on Sundays are on solid ground when the school rents to others. It is a rule about neutrality in the use of public property. If the school is open to everyone, it is open to the religious.

Displays, teachers and coaches

9. Can the Ten Commandments hang in a classroom?

Not under the controlling case. In Stone v. Graham (1980), the Court, in a short unsigned opinion by a 5-4 vote, struck down a Kentucky law that required a copy of the Ten Commandments, paid for by private donations, to be posted in every public classroom. The Court found that the law had no secular purpose, since the Commandments are plainly a sacred text, and that the notation about their role in the history of law did not change that. The same opinion said that the Commandments may be studied in an appropriate setting, for example in a history or comparative religion course. It was the posting that failed.

There is a wrinkle. In 2022, in the Kennedy case discussed below, the Court said it had long since abandoned the approach, known as the Lemon test, on which decisions like Stone leaned, and told courts to look to history and tradition. Some lawyers argue that this leaves Stone on shakier ground. But Stone has not been overruled, and a lower court is bound by it until the Supreme Court says otherwise. A school or legislature that wants a different result is asking the Court to revisit the case. On the separate question of displays on government grounds outside a school, read Two Ten Commandments cases on one day, opposite results, and the reason, and for the test the Court dropped, the three-part test that haunted churches for fifty years is finally gone.

10. May a teacher or coach pray?

This is the question the Court answered most recently, and it's the one that sparked the most heat. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), a public high school football coach, Joseph Kennedy, had been in the habit of kneeling at midfield for a brief, quiet prayer after games. The school district told him to stop and then put him on leave when he did not. The Supreme Court, 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, held that the Constitution protected him. His prayer was personal speech and a religious exercise, not the district's own speech, and the district could not punish him for it. The Court said the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses together protect it, and that the Establishment Clause does not demand its suppression.

The Court stressed the facts: the prayer was brief, it was his own, and nobody was required to join. It did not say that a teacher may lead a class in prayer, or require students to take part, or use his position to pressure them. The line is still between private religious expression and a school-directed religious exercise. A teacher can say grace over her own lunch, wear a cross, and pray silently. A teacher cannot turn a classroom into a worship service.

When the school gets it wrong

11. What should a parent do if the school gets it wrong?

Schools make mistakes in both directions. Some ban a child's lunchtime prayer. Some let a teacher lead a class prayer. Neither is lawful. If you think your school has crossed a line, take the steps in order.

1. Write down the facts. Who said what, when, and under what policy. Keep emails.
2. Ask for the written policy. Many problems are staff misunderstandings that fade when a principal reads the rule.
3. Talk to the principal, then the superintendent, then the school board. The board's public comment period is a legitimate place to raise it. The guide in How to Attend a School Board Meeting and Make Your Three Minutes Count helps.
4. Check federal guidance and your state's law. Some states add protection beyond the federal floor.
5. Get legal advice if it persists. Several legal organizations on different sides of these questions handle such cases, and many offer free consultations.

For a fuller set of everyday situations, five school-day situations and what the prayer rulings really decide is a good companion, and A Parent's Checklist for Finding Out What Your Child's School Teaches helps you see what the school does teach. The deeper question of what the founders thought, in Seven claims about God and the founding, tested against the record, is worth an evening.

The bottom line

• God was not banned from school. The school was told to stop writing prayers and leading devotions (Engel, 1962; Schempp, 1963). Students kept their right to pray.
• Student-led clubs, equal access to school buildings and a coach's personal prayer are protected (Mergens, Good News Club, Kennedy v. Bremerton), as long as the speech is the student's or teacher's own and not coerced.
• School-sponsored prayers at graduations and games, a legislature's push for prayer, and the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms have lost in the Supreme Court (Lee, Santa Fe, Wallace, Stone).
• Know the difference between teaching about religion, which is allowed, and practicing it as a school exercise, which is not.
• If your school gets it wrong, document the facts, ask for the policy, and take it up the ladder to the board.