What you need to know about Indiana school prayer controversy

Jenny Green
IndyStar
A national advocacy group says Reitz football coach Andy Hape's prayer with his team broke constitutional religious laws.
Noah Stubbs / Evansville Courier & Press

Once again, an Indiana high school has been drawn into controversy over prayer.

Evansville Reitz football players and their coach prayed after defeating Evansville Mater Dei on Oct. 13. Someone saw a photograph of the team prayer published in the Evansville Courier & Press and alerted a national organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The foundation wants the Evansville School Corp. to investigate, the Courier & Press reports.  

The issue is being passionately argued on Twitter, and one supporter of the Reitz prayer implored former Colts coach Tony Dungy to weigh in.

Here is what three Supreme Court rulings have established about what prayer in public schools and at public school events can — and cannot — look like:

1962: School-initiated prayer in public schools declared unconstitutional

This landmark Supreme Court ruling requires public schools to permit only voluntary, silent and nondisruptive prayer. The court cited the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which is intended to protect citizens from governmental establishment of an official religion. The reasoning: Public schools are government institutions, so school-led prayer violates that clause. 

1992: Supreme Court expands upon 1962 ruling

The court says that schools cannot invite members of the clergy to deliver prayers, even nondenominational ones.  

2000: Can students pray at athletic events or activities? Yes, but ...

In a further expansion of the 1962 ruling, the high court rules that a school policy permitting student-led prayer at high school football games violates the Establishment Clause. Prayer cannot be initiated or approved by the school. It  must not be coercive of other students. A school official — including a coach — cannot initiate, lead or participate in a team prayer.

What is OK: Students can engage in prayer that is voluntary, led by the students and done without official permission from the school.

The ruling came in a case where Texas students used loudspeakers to lead pregame prayers with the football team and fans. Then-Justice John Paul Stevens said that such a pregame prayer "has the improper effect of coercing those present to participate in an act of religious worship.”

Later rulings by lower courts, according to The New York Times, have deemed that group prayer initiated by students is protected under the First Amendment. The Times gave this example: "A group of student athletes could pray together before a game in the locker room, as long as the coach or other school officials are not involved."

Here is some Twitter response to the controversy:

In this 2007 photograph,
then-Evansville Reitz coach John Hart said a prayer with his team before the start of the state championship game in class 4A at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

► Are Indiana coaches praying with teams? Issue from 2015 still alive