Graduation Prayer Lawsuit Reinstated
A federal judge will allow the revival of a long-dormant lawsuit over school prayer at Rexburg - but U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge won’t let it get far until he decides if there’s a real issue.
After a 90-minute hearing on Friday, Lodge granted the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to reinstate a five-year-old lawsuit over prayer at Madison High School’s graduation ceremonies.
School Board lawyer Peter Lynch argued there was no real controversy. He called it a “contrived complaint” designed not to help the people involved but to advance the ACLU’s own agenda.
“This is a stale old case that ought to go away,” he said.
But Steven Pevar, ACLU attorney from Denver, said his clients, whose names have been kept concealed, have a right to be protected against what he claims are unconstitutional religious practices at graduation.
The case has been dormant for more than two years, awaiting the outcome of a similar case at Grangeville. ACLU attorneys eventually won a ruling from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals forbidding all prayer at graduation ceremonies, even those instigated by students and not by school officials.
That went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the case moot because the student involved already graduated.
Attorneys arguing before Lodge on Friday, and the judge himself, said they didn’t get much guidance out of that.
Left unanswered was whether the plaintiff in the ACLU’s case, identified only as Jane Doe and a child, must be revealed. Lodge ruled earlier the case would be dropped unless the parties were revealed.
Pevar said the plaintiffs will drop the case rather than allowing that to happen. He said the plaintiffs fear reprisals or actual violence from the community, if their identities become public knowledge.
He quoted an article in the Rexburg Standard-Journal in which a military veteran came to the paper’s office with a rifle and knife and threatened the people behind the lawsuit.
That shows there’s a “disturbing, threatening and intimidating” attitude in the community against the lawsuit, Pevar said. “My clients are sitting precariously on the top of a powder keg.”
But Lynch said without knowing who filed the lawsuit, he can’t ask relevant questions, such as whether they have a student in school or whether they are Madison School District taxpayers.