Engel v. Vitale (1962)

Executive summary about prayer in schools by Austin Cline

What authority, if any, does the government have when it comes religious rituals like prayers? Can a government write specific prayers for public school students to recite every day? Labeled the “To whom it may concern” prayer by one commentator, it stated:

Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.

Both the state court and the New York Court of Appeals allowed the prayer to be recited. On June 25, 1962, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 1 that it was unconstitutional for a government agency like a school or government agents like public school employees to require students to recite prayers.

According to Black, the governmentally created prayer recitation is much like the English creation of the Book of Common Prayer. It was to avoid exactly this type of relationship between government and organized religion that many early colonists came to America. In his words, the prayer was “a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause.”

Although the Regents argued that there was no compulsion on students to recite the prayer, Black observed that:

Neither the fact that the prayer may be denominationally neutral nor the fact that its observances on the part of students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the Establishment Clause...