School Law Bulletin #1999/14

IS IT A VIOLATION of the United States Constitution for a North Carolina school board to open its meetings with a prayer?

There is no definitive answer to this question be- cause it lands directly between two competing lines of constitutional thought. One line, springing from the 1971 United States Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, has sustained virtually every challenge to government-sponsored religious expressions in public schools, including prayer. The other line, springing from the Court’s 1983 decision in Marsh v. Chambers, has held that religious prayers authorized by a legislative body at the opening of its sessions do not violate the Constitution.

Is saying a prayer at the beginning of a school board meeting more like a teacher praying in a class- room (almost certainly unconstitutional), or is it more like a chaplain opening a session of the United States House of Representatives with a prayer (held to be constitutional)? Courts have gone both ways. The answer in a particular case may turn on such factors as the board’s purpose in having the opening prayer, whether the board has a history of opening its meetings with prayer, the way the individuals offering the prayer are selected, the content of the prayers, and the likelihood that children will be exposed to the prayers through compelled attendance at the school board meeting.

This article describes the two competing lines of cases and offers an analysis of the application of the law in different school board situations.