c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-It’s not often that Jay Sekulow of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice and Elliot Mincberg of the liberal advocacy group People For the American Way agree on a school-prayer issue.

But both men said Thursday they agreed with a federal appeals court decision this week that dealt another blow to a Mississippi law that required public schools to permit student-initiated prayers at all school events-voluntary and compulsory alike.”It’s a bad law”because it went too far, said Sekulow, chief counsel for the public-interest legal group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, who also established the Christian Coalition. While the Coalition’s agenda includes supporting prayer in public schools, Sekulow, who is based in Virginia Beach, Va., said the Mississippi law”does not have much meaning insofar as the overall school prayer issue is concerned because it was so poorly written.” Mincberg, legal director of People For the American Way, a staunch advocate of strict church-state separation, agreed.”The Mississippi statute was clearly unconstitutional because it forced students who did not want to participate to listen to prayers at school events simply because other students wanted the prayers recited,”he said from his office in Washington.

On Wednesday (Jan. 10), a three-judge panel of the 5th District U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in New Orleans, upheld a lower court decision that found the Mississippi law to be unconstitutional. However, the appeals court agreed with the lower court that student-initiated, non-sectarian and non-proselytizing prayers are allowable at commencement exercises because they occur infrequently.

In 1992, the same appellate court ruled that voluntary, student-led and student-initiated prayers were constitutional. That set the stage for the Mississippi legislature to approve the broad law now in the courts.

The appeals court noted that its latest decision in no way infringed upon the existing constitutional right of students who want to pray on their own on school property.

Sekulow and Mincberg agreed on that as well. But Mincberg-whose organization joined with the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the law in 1994-said the issue of prayer at school commencement events is still to be decided. Ultimately, he said, the Supreme Court will have to settle the issue.

The high court could get a chance with the Mississippi law. Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore said he would appeal this week’s appellate ruling further.”It’s going to be a tough battle,”Moore told reporters in Jackson, Miss.”But it’s a battle worth fighting.”

MJP END