ABSTRACT
Santa Fe, a small town thirty miles southeast of Houston, had recently introduced a policy placing the decision to have a prayer read over a loudspeaker before the start of games-as a means of "solemnizing" the event-in the hands of the student body via a two-step vote. The first vote would be whether to have a pregame "invocation or benediction." If that vote succeeded, a second vote would select one student as that season's pregame speaker; that student would be able choose the materials to read without any input from school officials. The Court's decisions on prayer in school have been grounded in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Supreme Court struck the policy before it was implemented, coloring the policy as governmental coercion. "The text and history of this policy, moreover, reinforce our objective student's perception that the prayer is, in actuality, encouraged by the school."
