Constitutional Law

Prayer on the Public High School Football Field

Despite federal court rulings that prohibit public school officials from organizing religious activities in the public schools, some high school football coaches in South Carolina believe they are exempt, according to this article from the Morning News, a Florence, S.C. daily. Wilson High School football coach Darryl Page told the newspaper that he’s aware of court rulings that prohibit organized prayer at public schools and that he tries to adhere to them. “If you look at the history of Wilson High School, it was established as a Freedman’s Bureau School,” he said. “This school has survived World Wars and segregation and throughout it all, it has kept its identity. From my perspective, how could all that happen if God didn’t have his hands on it? There’s no way. We still pray before games. It’s strictly an option with every player.”

The Morning News article, also noted several private schools in the area where prayer is pervasive, noting that those schools are not bound by the First Amendment principle of the separation of church and state.

Earlier in the year, a federal appeals court ruled that a public high school football coach in New Jersey could not constitutionally participate in prayer activities with his players. One of the attorneys who argued the case on behalf of the school district’s ban on praying with students, Richard Katskee, wrote about the ruling in a guest post for the ACSBlog.  

Full post as published by ACS Blog on August 25, 2008 (boomark / email).