Engel+vs.+Vitale

Back to Court Cases The parents of ten pupils in New York schools challenged the constitutionality of a New York state law requiring public schools to begin each day with a state authorized prayer drafted by the State Board of Regents. These parents argued that state-sponsored prayers in public schools violate the Establishment Clause. In a 6-1 decision (two justices did not participate), the Court held that school officials may not require devotional religious exercises during the school day, as this practice unconstitutionally entangles the state in religious activities and establishes religion. Appealing to history, the Court explained that the First Amendment protects religious liberty by keeping government from determining when and how people should pray or worship. Early Americans knew, "some of them from bitter personal experience, that one of the greatest dangers to the freedom of the individual to worship in his own way lay in the Government’s placing its official stamp of approval upon one particular kind of prayer or one particular form of religious services." The Court found that the Establishment Clause prohibits the government from involving itself in devotional religious exercises. It further explained that such separation of church and state protects both government from religious domination, and religion from government tyranny and abuse. ||
 * [[image:Engel vs. Vitale.jpg width="356" height="356"]] || ==**Engel vs. Vitale**==
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