Wednesday, January 11, 2012

RIP, Cranston High School West school prayer mural. 1963-2012

UPDATE 3, Tuesday, January 17: The Cranston Herald reports that the decision to file an appeal on the prayer case is NOT on the agenda for tonight’s school committee meeting and will be taken up at a future date.

UPDATE 2: The Providence Journal reported yesterday that the mural has been covered with a tarp and that the auditorium has been locked and will remain so until students return to school on Tuesday.

UPDATE: The Providence Journal reported Wednesday evening that an appeal is unlikely. The school committee meets on Tuesday, and the mural may be taken down next week.

By Linda Felaco

After flying under the radar for nearly 50 years following the Supreme Court’s landmark 1962 ruling that school prayer is unconstitutional, the prayer mural that has graced the auditorium wall of Cranston High School West since 1963 must be removed per the order of U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux.

Regular readers of Progressive Charlestown no doubt recall that I wrote several times about the case and my belief that the prayer was innocuous enough that even I as an atheist could tolerate it and saw no reason why it had to come down. No one had ever been required to recite the prayer when I attended the school, and my own mother, who taught there during the years when the banner was first installed, does not recall prayers being recited then either, just the moment of silence that was initiated after the 1962 Supreme Court ruling.

Unfortunately, the Cranston School Committee was probably its own worst enemy in this case. By arguing for keeping the mural up on religious grounds, they only served to prove why it had to come down and was constitutionally indefensible. And now Judge Lagueux has persuaded me of that as well. His summation of his decision might well have been addressed to me. Read it after the jump.


“There goes many a ship to sea...”


It remains for this Court to attempt to soothe those who may believe that this decision represents a harsh result over a minor Constitutional infraction. The Supreme Court offers two pertinent lessons. First, the Supreme Court urges us to remember that “insistence upon neutrality, vital as it surely is for untrammeled religious liberty, may appear to border upon religious hostility. But in the long view the independence of both church and state in their respective spheres will be better served by close adherence to the neutrality principle.” Schempp, 374 U.S. at 246. 83 S.Ct. at 1584. Second, later in the same opinion, the Supreme Court addresses the circumstance in Engel, where, as here, the complaints of a few overcame the beliefs and desires of the majority: “Nor did it matter that few children had complained of the practice, for the measure of the seriousness of a breach of the Establishment Clause has never been thought to be the number of people who complain of it.” Id. at 264, 83 S.Ct. at 1594. Plaintiff is clearly an articulate and courageous young woman, who took a brave stand, particularly in light of the hostile response she has received from her community.


Over the many years of its history, the Supreme Court has turned to the words of the Founding Fathers and the framers of the Constitution to support varying interpretations of the Establishment Clause. Many chapters have been devoted to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington and even Abraham Lincoln, and what their expectations were for the public religious practices of this nation. This Court has tried to resist the temptation of injecting lofty rhetoric into this opinion, but nonetheless was moved by the words, as quoted in Schempp, of Roger Williams, the founder of our state, who left the Massachusetts Bay Colony in pursuit of religious liberty.


There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or human combination, or society. It hath fallen out sometimes, that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked on one ship; upon which supposal, I affirm that all the liberty of conscience I ever pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges, that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.

Conclusion


For all these reasons, this Court grants Plaintiff’s motion for a mandatory permanent injunction, and orders the immediate removal of the School Prayer mural from Cranston High School West. The Plaintiff, as the prevailing party, is given twenty days from the date hereof to file for counsel fees and costs. Defendants shall have ten days after Plaintiff’s filing to respond. This Court will enter judgment after these issues are resolved. It is so ordered.

/s/Ronald R. Lagueux________________________
Ronald R. Lagueux
Senior United States District Judge
January 11, 2012

[Read the complete decision here.]