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The Supreme Court declared organized prayer in public schools unconstitutional in 1962. My grandfather ended it in my mothers elementary school class earlier than that. According to the story, one night when my mother was saying her prayers, she said a line that my grandmother detected was the Protestant version. She asked my mother where she learned it and my mother said that she learned it in school. School prayer was common back then, even in East Haven.

The next day my grandfather went to the school. He told the principal that it wasnt right for Catholic kids to have to say Protestant prayers. He might have also said some other things. My mothers class didnt say another organized prayer. Thereafter, in 1962, the Supreme Court decided Engel v. Vitale, holding that a compulsory, state-sponsored prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment. Writing for a 6-1 majority, Justice Black reasoned It is neither sacrilegious nor anti-religious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance.

A year later, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the court held that public schools could not lead religious exercises, which included reading Bible verses and reciting the Our Father over the loudspeaker. Justin Clarke wrote in that decision, In the relationship between man and religion, the State is firmly committed to a position of neutrality.

We learn in elementary school that the Pilgrims came to America to worship freely. Religious liberty in the United States, however, developed over the next few centuries. The Constitution prohibits a religious test to hold federal office. Although the First Amendment was ratified in 1791, its Free Exercise and Establishment clauses bound only the federal government until they were incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment by Supreme Court decisions in the 1940s. Cases involving organized prayer in other public events have continued to reach the Supreme Court since Engel and Schempp.

This past term, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court sided with a public high school football coach who led prayers on the field after games. The school district considered the action to raise Establishment Clause concerns. The majority, contrary to the facts in the record, considered the prayers to be private, not compulsory. While the decision did not overturn the cases of the 1960s that prohibited school prayer, it signaled the courts preference for religion in general and prioritized the religion of an authority figure over the liberty of those under that authority, student athletes.

The Washington Post recently reported that in the month since the Bremerton decision, school districts in various parts of the country are facing efforts from parents and even board members to introduce prayer into school activities. The United States has numerous religions and denominations, very likely because of the First Amendment. Organized or sanctioned prayer in public schools is government endorsement of religion and the imposition of specific beliefs, which may conflict with the beliefs of students, and thereby violate their religious liberty, as they did with those of the Engels, who were Jewish, the Schempps, who were Unitarian, and my own Catholic family, just 60 years ago. In matters of state and religion, be careful what you pray for.

Chris DeMatteo is an attorney based in New Haven.

Read more here:
Opinion: The thinning wall between church and state - CTPost