I’ve been reading the 1966 Senate hearings on school prayer. These were held by Senator Bayh’s Subcommittee to consider a proposed Article V amendment that would make clear that voluntary prayer in public schools was fine.
One takeaway from these hearings was that the critics of the Warren Court’s decisions were largely correct in predicting that school officials and courts would respond by seeking to removal all religion from schools. For instance, there was discussion about the legality of a moment of silence at the start of the school day. Supporters of the Court’s decisions said that was permissible. But Wallace v. Jaffree later held the opposite. How about prayers at a graduation ceremony? That was distinguishable from the Court’s decisions, those same supporters said. Lee v. Weisman said otherwise during the 1990s. And so on.
Now were those supporters wrong or just engaged in wishful thinking? I’m not sure. I’m also not sure whether the proposed amendment (assuming it could have passed) would have been too broad. More snow day research to come.