1992—In Lee v. Weisman, a 5-justice majority, in an opinion by Justice Kennedy, rules that a nondenominational prayer delivered by a rabbi at a public school graduation ceremony violated the Establishment Clause because students who chose to attend the ceremony were psychologically coerced “to stand as a group or, at least, maintain respectful silence” during the prayer. Who knew that Judaism had briefly become the established religion of Providence, Rhode Island?
In dissent, Justice Scalia observes that the majority “lays waste a tradition that is as old as public school graduation ceremonies themselves, and that is a component of an even more longstanding American tradition of nonsectarian prayer to God at public celebrations generally.” Scalia states: “I find it a sufficient embarrassment that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence regarding holiday displays has come to ‘requir[e] scrutiny more commonly associated with interior decorators than with the judiciary.’ But interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.” Further: “I see no warrant for expanding the concept of coercion beyond acts backed by threat of penalty—a brand of coercion that, happily, is readily discernible to those of us who have made a career of reading the disciples of Blackstone, rather than of Freud.”
God save the United States and this often-dishonorable Court!