Tuesday, March 16, 2010
(photo: Soulinall, Photo Bucket)
Eric Workman, the top student at Greenwood High School in Indiana, does not want the coming graduation ceremony to feature a student-led prayer, and has filed a lawsuit to stop the religious activity. Aided by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, Workman plans to argue in court that the prayer represents a violation of federal law and conflicts with recent U.S. Supreme Court
decisions.
In 1992, by a 5-4 vote in Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court prohibited prayers at public school graduations. In 2000, in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, the Court ruled 6-3 that high school students in Texas could not deliver prayers over the public address system at football games. Greenwood officials and some local residents say the school is within its rights to conduct a prayer because seniors voted in favor of it at a school assembly in the fall.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Greenwood High School Faces Suit over Prayer (by Jon Murray, Indianapolis Star)
Valedictorian Sues School Over Imposed Grad Prayer (by Bridget Freeland, Courthouse News Service)
Eric Workman v. Greenwood Community School Corp. (U.S. District Court, Southern Indiana) (pdf)
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