Engel v. Vitale 1962

AuthorDaniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw
Pages118-122

Page 118

Petitioner: Steven L. Engel, et al.

Respondent: William J. Vitale, et al.

Petitioner's Claim: That a New York school district violated the First Amendment by requiring a short prayer to be read before class each morning.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: William J. Butler

Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Bertram B. Daiker

Justices for the Court: Hugo Lafayette Black (writing for the Court), William J. Brennan, Jr., Tom C. Clark, William O. Douglas, John Marshall Harlan II, Earl Warren

Justices Dissenting: Potter Stewart (Felix Frankfurter and Byron R. White did not participate)

Date of Decision: June 25, 1962

Decision: Official prayers in public schools are unconstitutional because they violate the separation of church and state.

Significance: The decision prevents public school teachers from leading their students in any religious activity.

Preventing an official religion

For some of the people who left England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to colonize America, the reason was a desire to escape the Church of England. The Church of England was an official

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church supported by the British government. The British government required its citizens to worship in the Church of England and to say prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. People who followed other religions or said other prayers violated criminal laws and were punished.

The founders of the United States did not want the government to have religious power. They wanted U.S. citizens to be free to choose their own religion. The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects this freedom. (The Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791, contains the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.) The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The first part of this amendment, called the Establishment Clause, prevents the government from establishing an official religion or supporting one religion over others. It has been described as creating a "wall of separation between church and state." Although the First Amendment only refers to the federal government, state governments must obey it under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

First graders pause for a moment of silent prayer...

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