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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Pittsburgh – The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania will file a lawsuit at 1:30 p.m. today against the Keystone School District, located in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. The suit will ask the Court to immediately sign an order prohibiting the District from reciting, or allowing to be recited, any prayers as part of the May 27, 2005, graduation ceremony and from continuing to open School Board meetings with a sectarian prayer. The case, which is brought on behalf of unidentified complainants, is Doe v. Keystone School District.
“When public schools reserve time at a graduation ceremony for prayers, they violate the Constitution by putting the power, prestige and endorsement of the state behind whatever prayer is offered,” said ACLU of PA Legal Director Witold Walczak, who is representing the plaintiffs. “Officially-sponsored prayers make students and invited guests who subscribe to different beliefs and recite different prayers, or no prayers at all, feel like outcasts or second-class citizens.”
The school district has in past years included an invocation and benediction led by a teacher at the graduation ceremony. Additionally, School Board meetings open with the superintendent leading other board members and the audience in a prayer that inevitably references Jesus.
An April 29, 2005, letter from the ACLU requested that the District agree to stop the religious practices at both graduation and board meetings. In a May 10 response, the District’s solicitor indicated that the school agreed to the request. In recent days, however, the School Board President was quoted in the media saying that he was looking for a way around the ACLU action. Additionally, local religious leaders and community members have been pressuring the school district to keep the prayers.
Walczak said that these factors led to the decision to file today’s lawsuit. “The intense public pressure to retain clearly unconstitutional religious practices means that we need some binding legal document to ensure that the District will keep its promise to remove the prayers from graduation and school board meetings.” The District has signed a consent decree agreeing to stop the unconstitutional religious practices and the document will be presented to a judge today for signature.
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