Liberty Counsel Announces National 'Friend or Foe' Graduation Prayer Campaign
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
May 10, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A Christian law firm and a Christian university have teamed up to educate public school officials about students' rights when it comes to graduation ceremonies. The result is the "Friend or Foe" Graduation Prayer Campaign, a joint project between and Liberty University and the Florida-based legal group Liberty Counsel.
Dr. Jerry Falwell, founder and chancellor of Liberty University, joined Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver in announcing the launch of the Friend or Foe Graduation Prayer Campaign on May 4. Staver observed that Liberty Counsel is offering school officials and others a free legal memo that outlines what current law has to say about religious expression at school graduations. He also noted that the pro-family legal organization's attorneys are prepared to confront schools that engage in religious censorship and to take legal action, if necessary.
The head of Liberty Counsel notes that the firm has been defending graduation prayer ever since it was founded in 1989. In one such battle, Adler v. Duval County School Board, the organization argued a precedent-setting case against the American Civil Liberties Union and won the right of students to pray or give religious messages during graduation.
The case went before a federal appeals court five times and to the U.S. Supreme Court twice, but the final ruling established the legal principle that public schools may safely adopt an equal access policy for graduation events, with students and other speakers being allowed to present either secular or religious messages, including prayer.
Mat Staver | |
Liberty Counsel Chairman Puts Public Schools on Notice
In announcing the new "Friend or Foe" Graduation Prayer Campaign, Staver said Liberty Counsel will gladly educate and, if necessary, litigate in the interest of ensuring that prayer and expressions of religious viewpoints are not censored from graduation events. The attorney says Liberty Counsel attorneys will defend any school that follows the law with regard to allowing graduation speakers to express their religious viewpoints. And, he adds, when school officials censor graduation prayer or religious speech, Liberty Counsel will file suit.While some school officials may censor out religious viewpoints in an effort to avoid being accused of violating the Constitution's establishment clause, Staver says he wants public school administrators to understand that they can actually avoid litigation by not censoring religious speech at commencement ceremonies. In many cases, he notes, the legal problem arises when schools single out those viewpoints that are religious in nature and attempt to purge them from their graduations or other school events.
"For example," the Liberty Counsel spokesman explains, "if a valedictorian, a salutatorian, a class officer or another class representative gets into the podium because of their position, they obviously can talk about secular topics and viewpoints." However, he believes many school officials fail to understand that these student speakers can also talk about religious viewpoints, including prayer.
"And the same is true for an outside speaker that is selected from the community or from the nation to address the graduating body," Staver insists. "That person can also include religious viewpoints and prayer." And furthermore, he adds, public schools can freely hold graduation ceremonies at churches or other religious venues if those sites are chosen using religion-neutral criteria and offer a more convenient facility than the public school can provide.
School officials need not fear that they will be violating the First Amendment if they do not censor all religious expressions from their graduation exercises, the pro-family attorney says. "This country, indeed, was founded upon prayer," he contends, "and, of all places public schools ought to recognize that history and respect our Constitution."
Clearly, Staver emphasizes, public school students or outside speakers do not shed their free speech rights when they enter the graduation podium. "They have the same rights of free speech," the Liberty Counsel founder says, "even though it happens to occur in a public venue." Private, voluntary speech on public property, he asserts, is constitutionally protected.
