Donald Trump

In the United States, public schools are banned from conducting religious observances such as prayer. The legal basis for this prohibition is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which requires that


The first part of the amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") is known as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, while the second part ("or prohibiting the free exercise thereof") is known as the Free Exercise Clause.
Though each of these clauses originally applied only to the central US government, the Fourteenth Amendment extended the scope of the entire First Amendment to all levels of government, including the state level,[1] thus compelling states and their subject schools to adopt an equally detached approach to religion in schools.

School prayer prior to 1962[edit]

In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common practice for public schools to open with an oral prayer or Bible reading.[2][not in citation given] Catholics would sometimes object to the distinct Protestant observations performed in the local schools. For instance, in the Edgerton Bible Case (Weiss v. District Board (1890)), the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of Catholics who objected to the use of the King James Bible in Wisconsin public schools. This ruling was based on the state constitution and only applied in Wisconsin.

A Turning Point: The "Regents' Prayer" and Engel v. Vitale[edit]

The media and popular culture often erroneously credit atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair with removing school prayer from US public schools, when the case against recitation of the Lord's Prayer in Baltimore schools was decided by the Supreme Court in 1963. A more significant case had reached the Supreme Court one year prior, suddenly changing the legal climate for school prayer in the US.[3]
In 1955, the New York Board of Regents developed a prayer recommended (but not required) for the school districts under its purview. The prayer was relatively short: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country."[1][4] The board stated that the prayer would "combat juvenile delinquency and counter the spread of Communism."[4]
Seven years later, Steven I. Engel, a Jew, was upset to see his son’s hands clasped and his head bent in prayer. He told his son that this was “not the way we say prayers.” Engel, a founding member of the New York Civil Liberties Union, would bring action along with Daniel Lichtenstein, Monroe Lerner, Lenore Lyons, and Lawrence Roth, all parents of children in the Long Island, New York public school system, against Union Free School District No. 9 for its adoption and subsequent prescription of the so-called "Regent's prayer", arguing that it constituted the state-sponsored establishment of religion in violation of citizens’ First Amendment rights via the Fourteenth Amendment.[5]
Use of the Regent's prayer would be initially upheld in both New York State Court and in the New York Court of Appeals, prompting Engels to petition the US Supreme Court in the Engel v. Vitale case in 1962. With its 8–1 vote to make public recitation of the Regents' Prayer in public schools unlawful, the U.S. Supreme Court made its first-ever decision on coercive prayer in public schools. It made its second in 1963—the Abington School District v. Schempp ruling, which made the corporate reading of the Bible and recitation of the Lord's Prayer unlawful in public schools.[3]

1963 and after[edit]

In these two landmark decisions, Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), the Supreme Court established what is now the current prohibition on state-sponsored prayer in US schools. While the Engel decision held that the promulgation of an official state-school prayer stood in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause (thus overruling the New York Courts’ decisions), Abington held that Bible readings and other public school-sponsored religious activities were prohibited.[6] Madalyn Murray's lawsuit, Murray v. Curlett, contributed to the removal of compulsory Bible reading from the public schools of the United States, and has had lasting and significant effects.