Thanks for explaining your position on this. I add it to my slowly accumulating base for deciding what I believe- which is not set in stone by any means. Jello, maybe.
Yes, the coach was violating school policy, which the district designed to comply with federal law. It seems the coach is now teaching, though he is no longer head coach (some of the stories seem conflicting on this), in order to take the case to court. He has a con law professor representing him pro bono.
app.com
A cruel lesson in constitutional law: Prayer becomes an issue with East Brunswick High School football team
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/16/05
A week ago Friday the assistant principal at East Brunswick High School asked Marcus Borden to please drop by the main office after he was done teaching his second-period Spanish class. When Borden got there, around 10 a.m., he was ushered into a conference room where the superintendent was waiting for him, with the attorney for the school district on the speaker phone.
Borden, the head football coach at East Brunswick since 1983, was told that he could no longer pray with his players, in the locker room, at pregame meals, before games, after games, any time. He couldn't initiate any prayers, and he couldn't participate in any prayers. The law was clear, he was told.
It didn't matter that he had been praying with his players for 23 years, or that coaches and players at East Brunswick had been praying together long before Marcus Borden came along, or that this had evolved into a time-honored tradition. Nor did it matter that the majority of high school coaches in this country engage in some sort of prayer activity with their players.
In a nervous society that lives in fear of litigation, when someone complains, administrators everywhere are likely to react the same way.
So it was at East Brunswick High School when several students, their parents and a school employee complained that the coach was praying with his team.
Over the course of a 50-minute meeting, the superintendent and the lawyer spelled it out for Borden: no more praying with the players.
He left the meeting shaken. Later that day he resigned his position as head coach, in the middle of the football season, on the day of a game.
It was a matter of principle. He couldn't live with himself and at the same time abide by the new rules the school district was imposing on him.
"It seemed like a very rash decision to me," he would say of those guidelines. "It all happened without my principal or my athletic director in the room. It's baffling. It makes you wonder, is there a different agenda here?
"I've been removed from the tradition. They ripped my heart out. Everything I stand for. . . . I find this to be total disrespect for me and the 23 years I have spent as the football coach here.
"We're focusing on issues that are not of great importance. . . . I think this is a non-issue. . . . a misinterpretation of what's going on."
It's not like he was conducting a church service, Borden says.
"We don't say the Our Father or the Hail Mary," he points out. "We don't pray to Our Lady of Victory or any patron saint. There is no choral repetition at all. We're just giving thanks. We have a generic way of giving thanks."
Doesn't matter, say the people in charge. The law's the law, and they have the Supreme Court decisions behind them to prove it.
"It's a pretty straightforward and black-letter kind of situation," says Marty Pachman, the attorney for the school district.
"Gray area? I don't believe so. . . . If you invoke the power or authority of a higher being, it's a prayer."
And if a coach or a teacher or any other state employee at a public school anywhere in this country leads students in such a prayer or participates in such a prayer or in any way coerces students to join in, it amounts to an unconstitutional act, no matter what the circumstances may be.
"Participate, lead, join, coerce — that is black and white," Pachman says. "Those words are black and white."
It is more complicated than that, of course. Pachman may be arguing the case for the school district, but that doesn't mean he's unaware of the nuances of the football coach's situation.
What is participation, after all? If a player takes it upon himself to say grace before a team meal, does the coach bowing his head out of respect constitute participation? Was he actually praying? If so, how do you prove it? To be on the safe side, must the coach get up from the table and excuse himself for fear of committing an unconstitutional act?
The way things are, with people consumed by the threat of lawsuits, you have to wonder how absurd things can get. Just as you have to wonder what motivates someone to complain that a football coach is praying with his players.
Unless of course there is a problem, unless someone on the team feels excluded from the group based on his beliefs. If just one kid on the team is made to feel that he is not a team player because he won't engage in a prayer, then his constitutional rights have been violated and the coach is ultimately responsible, no matter who made the kid feel that way.
"There has never been anything like that in my entire 23 years here," Borden insists. "There has never been any indication that there was any type of peer pressure problem at all in our program."
Still, there was a complaint lodged and the school district reacted.
"I can see where the school board is coming from," says Ron Riccio, the former dean of the Seton Hall Law School who now teaches constitutional law there.
"There's a fairly consistent body of law that says no matter what you do, you can't have teachers and coaches saying prayers in public schools. The teacher or the coach is an agent of the state. The coach is the state. He is the government. And the government isn't allowed to pressure you to be a religious person when you don't want to be. That's the theory.
"The casebooks are filled with examples where public schools tried to get prayer in their schools, and this is just another case. So the school board is not acting in a frivolous way. I think they have to do what they did.
"If the coach is an agent of the state of New Jersey and he's saying to these kids, "You're praying, pal,' what's the kid supposed to do, say, "I don't want to pray?' Then there's the fear of retaliation.
"Our Constitution is built around the premise that our government is not going to compel you to be a religious person if you don't want to be."
That's why you no longer see nativity scenes in front of municipal buildings, for instance. Someone took offense and they had a constitutional right to do so, no matter how ridiculous such a beef might seem to most people.
As Riccio explains, the Constitution is not about most people, it's about protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
Having said that, having cited a half dozen cases the Supreme Court has heard over the past 20 years on the subject of prayer in public schools, Riccio says he would argue Marcus Borden's case in a heartbeat.
"This area is so confusing," he says. "The law is so complex."
And the inconsistencies are so prevalent and so dramatic.
They make you put your hand on a Bible before you swear to tell the truth in this country. "In God We Trust," it says on our currency. In their speeches our politicians are forever asking God to bless America. The anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ is a national holiday in this country.
And high school football coaches can't say a prayer with their players?
"How is this different from Congress opening sessions with a prayer?" Riccio would like to know. "You could make the argument that what this coach does with his players is nondenominational, that it's ceremonial, and that it's solemnizing the event instead of promoting or endorsing religion.
"He's still fighting an uphill battle, but it's worth fighting. He's going up against a lot of precedent, but he's not without an argument.
"I would have no problem defending him."
Meanwhile, Marcus Borden is no longer the head football coach at East Brunswick High School. He still teaches at the school, but he doubts that he will ever be able to return to the sidelines there.
"I think it would be very difficult for me to return to coaching," he says. "I don't think things would ever be the same." |
