The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today announced that they are charging the New York State Board of Regents with establishing “public school religion” by sponsoring a prayer in public schools.
The two organizations revealed that they submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court an amicus curiae brief in which they argue that the Regents’ prayer in public schools constituted “an establishment of religion” and thus violated the First Amendment to the Constitution. The brief was filed in a case involving the New Hyde Park public schools.
The brief stresses that both organizations include among their membership “vast numbers of people who not only believe in the existence of God, but devoutly worship Him.” However, the organizations hold to the view that “prayer in our democratic society is a matter for the home, synagogue and church, and not for the public schools.”
The New York Board of Regents, in a statement on moral and spiritual training in the schools, had recommended that the daily Pledge of Allegiance “might well be joined with this act of reverence to God.” The act of reverence was in the form of a prayer devised by the Board of Regents which reads: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”
In 1958, the New Hyde Park Board of Education directed the district principal to institute this prayer as a daily procedure following the Pledge of Allegiance. A number of parents in that school district brought suit against the Board of Education on the constitutionality of the prayer in the school system. The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court following decisions by the New York State courts upholding the New Hyde Park Board of Education.
Provisions for the excuse of pupils whose parents object to their participation in the school sponsored prayer, the brief states, does not make the practice any less an establishment of religion.
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