Supreme Court Bans School Prayer: Church and State Separate

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Abington School District v. Schempp on June 17, 1963, that mandatory Bible readings and recitation of the Lord's Prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The decision, combined with the previous year's ruling in Engel v. Vitale banning state-composed prayers, effectively ended organized religious devotion in American public education and ignited a cultural battle that continues six decades later. The case was brought by Edward Schempp, a Unitarian Universalist in Abington Township, Pennsylvania, whose children were required to listen to ten Bible verses read aloud each morning over the school's intercom system. A companion case, Murray v. Curlett, was filed by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, an atheist in Baltimore, against a similar Maryland requirement. The Court consolidated the cases, with Justice Tom C. Clark writing for the majority. Clark's opinion established the "secular purpose and primary effect" test: government actions must have a legitimate secular purpose and must not primarily advance or inhibit religion. Reading the Bible as devotional practice, Clark wrote, clearly served a religious purpose. The lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart, argued that the majority had misapplied the Establishment Clause and that preventing willing students from hearing Bible readings actually infringed on their free exercise of religion. Public reaction was fierce. Congressman Frank Becker of New York introduced a constitutional amendment to permit school prayer, gathering 150 co-sponsors. Billy Graham called the decision part of a trend toward "secularism." Multiple proposals for prayer amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1963, and none has passed. Voluntary, student-led prayer remains legal, but the line between permissible private devotion and impermissible state endorsement has been litigated continuously in the decades since Schempp.