Vowing to maintain a 50-plus year tradition of mealtime prayer at the Virginia Military Institute, a pair of legal groups are planning to help state officials appeal a federal court decision that bars the school from sponsoring the saying of grace before dinner.
Officials with the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defense Fund said the decision to appeal Thursday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon was immediately announced by the state attorney general's office and Solicitor General Bill Hurd.
Moon said the reciting of a prayer before the evening meal constitutes a "state-sponsored religious exercise" and was therefore unconstitutional.
"Because the prayers are drafted and recited at the direction of the institute's superintendent, the result is that government has become impermissibly entangled with religion," he added.
A civil suit to force the school to drop the prayers was filed last year by the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union after a pair of cadets complained.
Rebecca Glenberg, legal counsel for the Virginia ACLU, threatened the legal action against VMI in a letter to Gen. Josiah Bunting III, the school's superintendent.
If the practice wasn't stopped, litigation was "a good possibility," she said in her Feb. 28, 2001, letter.
Bunting wrote back that the school viewed the practice as constitutionally sound and said the practice of reciting a mealtime prayer would continue.
"When the students came to us with their complaint, we hoped to resolve the matter short of litigation," Glenberg – who argued the case for the ACLU – said, following Thursday's ruling. "Unfortunately, neither the ACLU nor the students were able to convince VMI officials that they were violating the Constitution, and we had to take the case to court."
Virginia ACLU officials applauded Moon's ruling.
"The right not to be pressured by the state to participate in a religious activity is just as important as the right of all persons to freely choose their own religion," said Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter. "The court reminded us of that important principle today."
Said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the ACLJ, "We will assist in every way possible to defend the constitutionality of this long-standing tradition at VMI.
"The prayers do not violate the Constitution and are no different than the prayers that are offered in state and federal government institutions – including Virginia's General Assembly and the U.S. Congress," he said. "A prayer should not be automatically disqualified and banned just because it occurs in a state-sponsored setting."
Jordan Lorence, an attorney and senior vice president of ADF, told WND his organization would "definitely" help the state appeal the case "in any way."
Hurd's office could not be reached for comment.
Sekulow, meanwhile, accused the ACLU of a wider agenda.
"The ACLU would like nothing better than to remove any mention of prayer or 'God' from the public arena," he said. "We believe there are strong constitutional protections that permit this activity to occur. This is a critically important case that could eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court."
Willis denied that, noting the court action "was not an attempt by the ACLU or the students to remove religion from the VMI campus."
"Every student should be allowed to practice the religion of his or her choice. In fact, it would be wrong for VMI to prevent individual or group religious practices that do not disrupt the school's educational process," he said. "But the Constitution prohibits the state from pressuring anyone to participate in a religious ceremony, and that is exactly what was happening here."
Nevertheless, critics of Moon's decision say a recent Supreme Court ruling could be a major factor on appeal.
In December, the high court let stand an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said high-school students could pray at graduation ceremonies, as long as students have an option to give either secular or sacred messages. In addition, schools cannot pre-review or censor a student's speech.
The argument could be made to apply to colleges as well, experts believe.
"The implication of [that] ruling extends beyond the three Southern states [represented by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals] to the entire nation," said Mat Staver, an ADF attorney. "Students around the country may offer prayer or religious messages under a neutral policy that allows for both secular and religious speech."
Lorence said in these types of First Amendment cases involving religious speech and expression, the high court has generally followed two lines of thought.
"Basically, there are two competing understandings of the Establishment Clause that the Supreme Court has schizophrenically recognized in different sets of cases," he said. "There's the modern, sort of 'ACLU' version ... and the historical intent-of-the-Framers approach." Moon, he said, "appeared to follow the ACLU definition."
"VMI had arguments [in the first case] from both perspectives," he said. "This could end up being another test case for the Supreme Court to basically return to the original intent – which I think was much more permissive with government-sponsored religious activity. But I don't know how the court will look at it."
Founded in 1839, VMI is the nation's oldest state-sponsored military college.
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