This one wasn’t even a close call. The Supreme Court said yesterday it will not hear an appeal of a ruling that bars official prayers at the Virginia Military Institute. Every judge who heard the case considered it a no-brainer. The three-judge panel on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which isn’t exactly liberal, ruled against VMI unanimously last year.
This isn’t even particularly controversial. A public state university was compelling students to participate in a daily religious exercise. Under the prayer policy, cadets would assemble in the school mess hall. They’d have to stand at attention while VMI’s cadet chaplain would read a prayer, which depending on the day, would begin with “Almighty God,” “Father God,” “Heavenly Father” or “Sovereign God.” Each day’s prayer was also followed with the invocation, “Now, O God, we receive this food and share this meal together with thanksgiving, Amen.”
The point isn’t that prayer is wrong or inappropriate; the point is that a public university shouldn’t be encouraging students to participate in a religious exercise. Students can pray before, during, and after the meal if they want, or not. It should be up to them. As the 4th Circuit explained:
Although we recognize and respect a cadet’s individual desire to say grace before supper, the Establishment Clause prohibits VMI from sponsoring this religious practice…. VMI has composed, mandated, and monitored a daily prayer for its cadets. In this way, VMI has taken a position on what constitutes appropriate religious worship an entanglement with religious activity that is forbidden by the Establishment Clause.
Pretty obvious stuff. VMI didn’t even come up with a compelling argument outside of the fact that they hosted the religious exercise before so they’d like to continue to do so.
With this in mind, I found Antonin Scalia’s public rebuke yesterday strange, even for him.
Usually, when the high court turns down an appeal, it’s quick and painless. Every Monday, the court issues a dozen or so pages listing cases the justices won’t hear with nary a word. Yesterday, however, Scalia made the announcements a little livelier.
“VMI has previously seen another of its traditions abolished by this court,” Scalia wrote, referring to the court’s 1996 decision mandating coeducation at VMI. “This time, however, its cause has been ignored rather than rejected — though the consequences will be just the same.”
[…]
[Scalia added] that prayer at a military college is more likely to be constitutional than prayer at a nonmilitary one, “since group prayer before military mess is more traditional than group prayer at ordinary state colleges.”
I have no idea what Scalia is talking about. How is the “traditional” practice relevant as a constitutional matter? As a “strict constructionist,” Scalia isn’t supposed to care about such things. If the government can’t promote prayer and encourage participation in religious exercises, why would it matter if the practice has been around for a week or a century? The law is the law.
For that matter, Scalia left out a minor detail. Prayers at VMI aren’t exactly “traditional” anyway. The school dropped mealtime prayers in 1990 and the cadets seemed to do just fine. Gen. Josiah Bunting III reinstituted the policy in 1995.
But the most disgusting reaction to yesterday’s Supreme Court announcement came from Virginia attorney general Jerry Kilgore (R).
The high court’s “inaction on this issue creates a tear in the fabric of our country,” Kilgore said in a statement Monday.
“It is disheartening that while American soldiers are fighting for our liberties in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, our young men and women training to be soldiers and leaders at VMI are prevented from praying for their safety as a body,” he said.
This is infuriating and demagoguery at its worst. No one at VMI is “prevented from praying” for anything, ever. Kilgore isn’t a moron; he must realize this, but it’s easier to scare people with lies than it is to respect church-state separation.
To hear the right-wing tell it, it’s never enough to allow individuals to exercise their religious freedoms on their own. They insist government needs to “help” religion. If people are allowed to worship when and how they want without government interference, the right sees this as an infringement on religious liberty.
I will never understand such a twisted worldview.