Jewish Groups Hail Supreme Court Decision Banning Silent Prayer in Public Schools As Unconstitutiona

The Supreme Court decision yesterday by a vote of 6-3 striking down an Alabama law authorizing a daily one-minute of silence for prayer or meditation to public schools was hailed today by four American Jewish organizations.

The four-American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and B’nai B’rith International — said they view the court’s decision as a major victory in the fight against efforts to establish state-sponsored voluntary prayer in public schools.

The court’s ruling is a strong reaffirmation of its historic 1962 decision taken by the Warren Court, that banned officially sponsored vocal prayer and Bible reading in public schools, partly because such activities implied state sponsored support of a religion or of one religion over another.

OTHER STATES’ LAWS MAY BE O.K.

Nevertheless, while the court ruled yesterday against the Alabama “moment of silence” law, it suggested that such statutes which exist in varying versions in some 25 states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, may be constitutional and not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of an official establishment of religion.

The Alabama law, however, was struck down because it endorsed religion as a “favored practice,” the court said, adding that “the legislative intent (of Alabama lawmakers) to return prayer to the public schools is, of course, quite different from merely protecting every student’s right to engage in voluntary prayer.”

Writing for the majority, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens also said that the Alabama lawmakers’ “endorsement” of prayer as a “favored practice” is “not consistent with the established principle that the government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.”

DISSENTER DENIES GOVERNMENT MUST BE ‘NEUTRAL’

But Associate Justice William Rehnquist, in his dissenting opinion, declared: “Nothing in the Establishment Clause requires government to be strictly neutral between religion and irreligion. It would come as much to the shock of those who drafted the Bill of Rights as it will to a large number of thoughtful Americans today to learn that the Constitution prohibits the Alabama legislature from ‘endorsing’ prayer.”

The court decision yesterday centered upon a portion in 1981 Alabama law which declared: “At the commencement of the first class of each day in all grades in all public schools, the teacher in charge of the room in which each class is held may announce that a period of silence not to exceed one minute in duration shall be observed for meditation or voluntary prayer, and during such a period no other activities shall be engaged in.”

The case against the Alabama law was brought by 41-year-old Ishamel Jaffree, an agnostic who is employed as a lawyer by the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama. He filed suit in 1982 against the Mobile County School Board after his three children complained to him that their teacher had led prayers in school. The suit was expanded to challenge the state law permitting a moment of “meditation or voluntary prayer” and separate statute providing for teacher led prayers.

TEACHERS CAN’T LEAD PRAYERS

In the spring of 1984 the supreme court let stand a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th circuit in favor of Jaffree’s suit except with regard to the meditation and prayer statute, which it agreed to review. The court’s ruling in Washington yesterday also declared unconstitutional a companion law that permitted teachers to lead students in a vocal prayer to God as “the Creator and Supreme Judge of the World.”

The AJCommittee’s legal director, Samuel Rabinove, said the court’s decision was in concert with the AJCommittee’s view that “organized prayer, whether spoken or silent, constituted an act of worship that has no place in public school classrooms or assembly.”

The AJCongress’s president, Theodore Mann, called the court’s ruling “a major victory in the battle to keep religious activity out of the nation’s public schools. Students continue to enjoy a constitutionally protected right to pray silently whenever they choose, but the Supreme Court decision recognizes that it is not the business of government, through its public schools, to encourage or promote such religious activity.”

WALL OF SEPARATION MAINTAINED

The ADL’s Civil Right Committee chairman Seymour Reich hailed the Court’s decision as “a reaffirmation that organized religious activities do not belong in our nation’s public schools” and called the court’s action “a major decision supporting the fundamental constitutional principle of separation of church and state.”

Daniel Thursz, B’nai B’rith executive vice president, said the court’s ruling “clearly maintains the wall separating church and state,” and that it will prevent public schools from being turned into religious battlegrounds. “Although we may have a question about meditation, which the Supreme Court allows, we believe it is better than offering exercises which can only heighten the differences in religious practice in this country,” Thursz said.

The court’s decision, one of several on matters of religion that the high court is expected to issue before it adjourns later this month or early in July, was viewed as a setback for President Reagan who campaigned last year for a return to school prayer. The Justice Department supported the Alabama law as a “way to accommodate the religious needs of school children.”