Santa Fe Independent School District V. Doe Case Study

In the year of 2000, Santa Fe Independent School District approved a policy that would allow a student to give a prayer, which the district referred to as messages, at Friday night football games. These prayers were student initiated and were given through the public address system at the Santa Fe High School stadium. These prayers or ‘messages’ were given because students from the high school voted in favor of these student led messages. The practicing of giving these messages would violate the spectators rights because the messages violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. This meant that the messages were intertwining religion government too much because Santa Fe High School is public school. In the 2000 Supreme Court case “Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe,” the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision against Santa Fe restricted the students’ rights because they were no longer able to
The Supreme Court used the case of Lee v. Wiesman to help guide their decision. They used this cases to help their decision because the case was about a rabbi who gave a prayer during a school ceremony. For this case, the court stated the school’s “action must not coerce anyone to support or participate in a religious exercise.” (Lee v. Weisman). The court applied this test to the Santa Fe case and concluded that delivering a prayer “over the school’s public address system prior to each football game coerces student participation in religious events.” (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe). Similarly, in the 1985 case, Wallace v. Jaffree, teachers were giving prayers at a public school. This was voted unconstitutional because it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, just as the Santa Fe case was ruled, saying that government and religion are to be kept separate. (Santa Fe Independent School District v.