Whether or not the Constitution permits voluntary student prayer groups in public schools was left undecided by a Supreme Court decision Tuesday.
The Court sidestepped the issue when it ruled by a 5-4 vote, that a former member of the school board in Williamsport, Pa. had no legal right to challenge a federal district court decision upholding the right of a Christian student group, called Petros, to hold prayer meetings.
In the majority opinion on the case known as Bender v. Williamsport, Justice John Paul Stevens said that “an individual board member cannot invoke the board’s interest in the case to confer standing upon himself.” He also said that John Youngman Jr., the former board member, could not show that he or his school-age son were harmed by the meetings.
The majority opinion did not deal with the issue of the legality of voluntary prayer meetings in high schools. But the dissenters, led by Chief Justice Warren Burger, said that high school students had a right based on the First Amendment guarantee of free speech to hold prayer meetings on the same basis as other extracurricular activities.
This argument is essentially the same principle as contained in the Equal Access Act, enacted by Congress last year. This law provides that if public schools permit student-initiated organizations to meet before or after the school day they cannot discriminate against religious groups.
The Williamsport case started in 1981 when school officials, acting on legal advice, banned prayer meetings initiated by Petros. The students sued the school board and were upheld by a federal district court. Youngman appealed on his own, but his term on the board ran out before a federal appellate court ruled the student prayer group unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court decision Tuesday will allow the prayer meetings at the Williamsport school. However, the broader issue of whether such groups are constitutional will eventually come up before the Court.
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