472 U.S. 38 (1985), argued 4 Dec. 1984, decided 4 June 1985 by vote of 6 to 3; Stevens for the Court, Powell concurring, O'Connor concurring in the judgment, Burger, White, and Rehnquist in dissent. Public opinion has never endorsed the Supreme Court's school prayer decisions. Since 1961, more than 75 percent of those questioned by the Gallup Poll have consistently supported reintroduction of formal prayer into the public schools. Constitutional amendments to this end were periodically but unsuccessfully introduced in Congress. The constitutional doctrine of Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington v. Schempp (1963) remained in force. Wallace was the first serious test of its continuing vitality.
The Alabama statute at issue in Wallace, as initially enacted in 1978, authorized schools to provide a minute of silence for “meditation.” A 1981 amendment provided a similar period for “meditation or voluntary prayer,” and in 1982 the law was changed to allow teachers to lead “willing students” in a specified prayer to “Almighty God.” Upon challenge by Ishmael Jaffree and various separationist groups, a federal district court held that Engel and Schempp were wrong; states did have the authority to establish religion. A court of appeals reversed, and the Supreme Court granted *certiorari to decide the constitutionality of only the 1981 amendment: Can a state provide a moment of silence at the beginning of a school day for the express purpose of facilitating “meditation or prayer?”
There were reasons to believe that the Court would be amenable to opening a crack in the “wall of separation” on this question. The public's support for school prayer was translated by various state legislatures into statutes aiding religious schools and practices. The election of Ronald Reagan as president and the legal mobilization of accommodationist forces—seven groups, including the Moral Majority, the Christian Legal Society, and the Legal Foundation of America, filed amicus curiae briefs in Wallace—also augured ill for separationist precedents. The Administration was dedicated to an interpretation of the
There were also signs from the Court that it was ready to reject its earlier approach. Even before Reagan's election, it adopted an accommodationist posture in affirming, for the first time, direct payment of public funds to religious schools (Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Regan, 1980). In subsequent cases, it upheld tax credits and deductions to parents of all schoolchildren (Mueller v. Allen, 1983), state‐paid legislative chaplains (Marsh v. Chambers, 1983), and a publicly sponsored nativity crèche (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984). The time seemed ripe for a reconsideration of Engel/Schempp. However, it proved not to be.
Justice John Paul Stevens's majority opinion striking down the law was short, to the point, and girded by separationist precedents. Applying the Schempp test as it had been reworked in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), he found the practices sanctioned by the statute to lack a “secular purpose”—one not grounded in a desire to “advance” religion. Although the meditation and prayer statute failed constitutional scrutiny, the Court left open the possibility that one confined to an undefined moment of silence might pass muster; Lewis Powell's concurrence emphasized that point. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor concurred separately to reiterate her “endorsement” standard, first articulated in her Lynch concurrence, and to note that a neutral moment of silence law would not be controlled by the doctrine of Engel and Schempp.
The dissents of Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Byron White held that the Alabama act was an example of “benevolent neutrality” and was thus constitutional under the Court's accommodationist precedents (p. 89). Justice William Rehnquist's dissent was more pointed. He contended that any decision based on Everson v. Board of Education (1947) was wrong; the Constitution does not impose a “wall of separation” between church and state. After an extended analysis of the intent of the framers of the First Amendment, he concluded that the Establishment Clause merely forbids state establishment of a national church or preference of one sect over others and most certainly does not require a state to be neutral between religion and “irreligion.”
See also Religion.
— Joseph F. Kobylka
