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/* The Court's most recent opinion on Church v. State takes the
form of a prayer at junior high school graduation being found to
be unconstitutional. */

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be
released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the
time the opinion is issued.  The syllabus constitutes no part of
the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of
Decisions for the convenience of the reader.  See United States
v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

LEE et al. v. WEISMAN, PERSONALLY AND AS
NEXT FRIEND OF WEISMAN
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the first circuit

No. 90-1014.  Argued November 6, 1991-Decided June 24, 1992

/* A case which took the court a comparatively long time to rule
upon. */

Principals of public middle and high schools in Providence, Rhode
Island, are permitted to invite members of the clergy to give
invocations and benedictions at their schools' graduation
ceremonies.  Petitioner Lee, a middle school principal, invited a
rabbi to offer such prayers at the graduation ceremony for
Deborah Weisman's class, gave the Rabbi a pamphlet containing
guidelines for the composition of public prayers at civic
ceremonies, and advised him that the prayers should be
nonsectarian.  Shortly before the ceremony, the District Court
denied the motion of respondent Weisman, Deborah's father, for a
temporary restraining order to prohibit school officials from
including the prayers in the ceremony.  Deborah and her family
attended the ceremony, and the prayers were recited.
Subsequently, Weisman sought a permanent injunction barring Lee
and other petitioners, various Providence public school
officials, from inviting clergy to deliver invocations and
benedictions at future graduations.  It appears likely that such
prayers will be conducted at Deborah's high school graduation.
The District Court enjoined petitioners from continuing the
practice at issue on the ground that it violated the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  The Court of
Appeals affirmed.

Held: Including clergy who offer prayers as part of an official
public school graduation ceremony is forbidden by the
Establishment Clause.  Pp.7-19.

 (a) This Court need not revisit the questions of the
definition and scope of the principles governing the extent of
permitted accommodation by the State for its citizens' religious

beliefs and practices, for the controlling precedents as they
relate to prayer and religious exercise in primary and secondary
public schools compel the holding here.  Thus, the Court will not
reconsider its decision in Lemon v.  Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602.  The
principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of
religion does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed
by the Establishment Clause, which guarantees at a minimum that a
government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in
religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which
"establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to
do so." Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 678.  Pp.7-8.

 (b) State officials here direct the performance of a
formal religious exercise at secondary schools' promotional and
graduation ceremonies.  Lee's decision that prayers should be
given and his selection of the religious participant are choices
attributable to the State.  Moreover, through the pamphlet and
his advice that the prayers be nonsectarian, he directed and
controlled the prayers' content.  That the directions may have
been given in a good faith attempt to make the prayers acceptable
to most persons does not resolve the dilemma caused by the
school's involvement, since the government may not establish an
official or civic religion as a means of avoiding the
establishment of a religion with more specific creeds.  Pp.8-11.

 (c) The Establishment Clause was inspired by the lesson
that in the hands of government what might begin as a tolerant
expression of religious views may end in a policy to indoctrinate
and coerce.  Prayer exercises in elementary and secondary schools
carry a particu- lar risk of indirect coercion.  Engel v. Vitale,
370 U.S. 421; Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203.
The school district's supervision and control of a high school
graduation ceremony places subtle and indirect public and peer
pressure on attending students to stand as a group or maintain
respectful silence during the invocation and benediction.  A
reasonable dissenter of high school age could believe that
standing or remaining silent signified her own participation in,
or approval of, the group exercise, rather than her respect for
it.  And the State may not place the student dissenter in the
dilemma of participating or protesting.  Since adolescents are
often susceptible to peer pressure, especially in matters of
social convention, the State may no more use social pressure to
enforce orthodoxy than it may use direct means.  The
embarrassment and intrusion of the religious exercise cannot be
refuted by arguing that the prayers are of a de minimis
character, since that is an affront to the Rabbi and those for
whom the prayers have meaning, and since any intrusion was both
real and a violation of the objectors' rights.  Pp.11-15.

 (d) Petitioners' argument that the option of not
attending the ceremony excuses any inducement or coercion in the
ceremony itsel is rejected.  In this society, high school
graduation is one of life's most significant occasions, and a
student is not free to absent herself from the exercise in any
real sense of the term "voluntary." Also not dispositive is the
contention that prayers are an essential part of these ceremonies
because for many persons the occasion would lack meaning without
the recognition that human achievements cannot be understood
apart from their spiritual essence.  This position fails to
acknowledge that what for many was a spiritual imperative was for
the Weismans religious conformance compelled by the State.  It
also gives insufficient recognition to the real conflict of
conscience faced by a student who would have to choose whether to
miss graduation or conform to the state-sponsored practice, in an
environment where the risk of compulsion is especially high.
Pp.15-17.

 (e) Inherent differences between the public school system
and a session of a state legislature distinguish this case from
Marsh v.  Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, which condoned a prayer
exercise.  The atmosphere at a state legislature's opening, where
adults are free to enter and leave with little comment and for
any number of reasons, cannot compare with the constraining
potential of the one school event most important for the student
to attend.  Pp.17-18.
908 F.2d 1090, affirmed.

 Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor, and Souter, JJ., joined.  Blackmun,
J., and Souter, J., filed concurring opinions, in which Stevens
and O'Connor, JJ., joined.  Scalia, J., filed a dissenting
opinion, in which Rehnquist, C.J., and White and Thomas, JJ.,
joined.


 Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.

 School principals in the public school system of the city
of Providence, Rhode Island, are permitted to invite members of
the clergy to offer invocation and benediction prayers as part of
the formal graduation ceremonies for middle schools and for high
schools.  The question before us is whether including clerical
members who offer prayers as part of the official school
graduation ceremony is consistent with the Religion Clauses of
the First Amendment, provisions the Fourteenth Amendment makes
applicable with full force to the States and their school
districts.

I
A

 Deborah Weisman graduated from Nathan Bishop Middle
School, a public school in Providence, at a formal ceremony in
June 1989.  She was about 14 years old.  For many years it has
been the policy of the Providence School Committee and the
Superintendent of Schools to permit principals to invite members
of the clergy to give invocations and benedictions at middle
school and high school graduations.  Many, but not all, of the
principals elected to include prayers as part of the graduation
ceremonies.  Acting for himself and his daughter, Deborah's
father, Daniel Weisman, objected to any prayers at Deborah's
middle school graduation, but to no avail.  The school principal,
petitioner Robert E. Lee, invited a rabbi to deliver prayers at
the graduation exercises for Deborah's class.  Rabbi Leslie
Gutterman, of the Temple Beth El in Providence, accepted.

 It has been the custom of Providence school officials to
provide invited clergy with a pamphlet entitled "Guidelines for
Civic Occasions," prepared by the National Conference of
Christians and Jews.  The Guidelines recommend that public
prayers at nonsectarian civic ceremonies be composed with
"inclusiveness and sensitivity," though they acknowledge that
"[p]rayer of any kind may be inappropriate on some civic
occasions." App. 20-21.  The principal gave Rabbi Gutterman the
pamphlet before the graduation and advised him the invocation and
benediction should be nonsectarian.  Agreed Statement of Facts
-17, id., at 13.

 Rabbi Gutterman's prayers were as follows:

 "INVOCATION
 "God of the Free, Hope of the Brave:
 "For the legacy of America where diversity is cele-
brated and the rights of minorities are protected, we thank You.
May these young men and women grow up to enrich it.
 "For the liberty of America, we thank You.  May these new
graduates grow up to guard it.
 "For the political process of America in which all its
citizens may participate, for its court system where all may seek
justice we thank You.  May those we honor this morning always
turn to it in trust.
 "For the destiny of America we thank You.  May the
graduates of Nathan Bishop Middle School so live that they might
help to share it.
 "May our aspirations for our country and for these young
people, who are our hope for the future, be richly fulfilled.
 AMEN"

 "BENEDICTION
 "O God, we are grateful to You for having endowed us with
the capacity for learning which we have celebrated on this joyous
commencement.
 "Happy families give thanks for seeing their children
achieve an important milestone.  Send Your blessings upon the
teachers and administrators who helped prepare them.
 "The graduates now need strength and guidance for the
future, help them to understand that we are not complete with
academic knowledge alone.  We must
each strive to fulfill what You require of us all:  To do justly,
to love mercy, to walk humbly.
 "We give thanks to You, Lord, for keeping us alive,
sustaining us and allowing us to reach this special, happy
occasion.
 AMEN"
Id., at 22-23.

 The record in this case is sparse in many respects, and
we are unfamiliar with any fixed custom or practice at middle
school graduations, referred to by the school district as
"promotional exercises." We are not so constrained with reference
to high schools, however.  High school graduations are such an
integral part of American cultural life that we can with
confidence describe their customary features, confirmed by
aspects of the record and by the parties' representations at oral
argument.  In the Providence school system, most high school
graduation ceremonies are conducted away from the school, while
most middle school ceremonies are held on school premises.
Classical High School, which Deborah now attends, has conducted
its graduation ceremonies on school premises.  Agreed State- ment
of Facts -37, id., at 17.  The parties stipulate that attendance
at graduation ceremonies is voluntary.  Agreed Statement of Facts
-41, id., at 18.  The graduating students enter as a group in a
processional, subject to the direction of teachers and school
officials, and sit together, apart from their families.  We
assume the clergy's participation in any high school graduation
exercise would be about what it was at Deborah's middle school
ceremony.  There the students stood for the Pledge of Allegiance
and remained standing during the Rabbi's prayers.  Tr. of Oral
Arg. 38.  Even on the assumption that there was a respectful
moment of silence both before and after the prayers, the Rabbi's
two presentations must not have extended much beyond a minute
each, if that.  We do not know whether he remained on stage
during the whole ceremony, or whether the students received
individual diplomas on stage, or if he helped to congratulate
them.

 The school board (and the United States, which supports
it as amicus curiae) argued that these short prayers and others
like them at graduation exercises are of profound meaning to many
students and parents throughout this country who consider that
due respect and acknowledgement for divine guidance and for the
deepest spiritual aspirations of our people ought to be expressed
at an event as important in life as a graduation.  We assume this
to be so in addressing the difficult case now before us, for the
significance of the prayers lies also at the heart of Daniel and
Deborah Weisman's case.

B

 Deborah's graduation was held on the premises of Nathan
Bishop Middle School on June 29, 1989.  Four days before the
ceremony, Daniel Weisman, in his individual capacity as a
Providence taxpayer and as next friend of Deborah, sought a
temporary restraining order in the United States District Court
for the District of Rhode Island to prohibit school officials
from including an invocation or benediction in the graduation
ceremony.  The court denied the motion for lack of adequate time
to consider it.  Deborah and her family attended the graduation,
where the prayers were recited.  In July 1989, Daniel Weisman
filed an amended complaint seeking a permanent injunction
barring petitioners, various officials of the Providence public
schools, from inviting the clergy to deliver invocations and
benedictions at future graduations.  We find it unnecessary to
address Daniel Weisman's taxpayer standing, for a live and
justiciable controversy is before us.  Deborah Weisman is
enrolled as a student at Classical High School in Providence and
from the record it appears likely, if not certain, that an
invocation and benediction will be conducted at her high school
graduation.  Agreed Statement of Facts -38, id., at 17.

/* This is not the soundest basis for the ruling. In fact, the
best is that the issue is "capable of reptition yet evading
review. For that matter, a post hoc declaration that the act was
wrong is also a viable remedy. */

 The case was submitted on stipulated facts.  The District
Court held that petitioners' practice of including invocations
and benedictions in public school graduations violated the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and it enjoined
petitioners from continuing the practice.  728 F.  Supp. 68 (RI
1990).  The court applied the three-part Establishment Clause
test set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971).  Under
that test as described in our past cases, to satisfy the
Establishment Clause a governmental practice must (1) reflect a
clearly secular purpose; (2) have a primary effect that neither
advances nor inhibits religion; and (3) avoid excessive
government entanglement with religion.  Committee for Public
Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756, 773
(1973).  The District Court held that petitioners' actions
violated the second part of the test, and so did not address
either the first or the third.  The court decided, based on its
reading of our precedents, that the effects test of Lemon is
violated whenever government action "creates an identification of
the state with a religion, or with religion in general," 728 F.
Supp., at 71, or when "the effect of the governmental action is
to endorse one religion over another, or to endorse religion in
general." Id., at 72.  The court determined that the practice of
including invocations and benedictions, even so-called
nonsectarian ones, in public school graduations creates an
identification of governmental power with religious practice,
endorses religion, and violates the Establishment Clause.  In so
holding the court expressed the determination not to follow Stein
v. Plainwell Community Schools, 822 F.2d 1406 (1987), in which
the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, relying on our
decision in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783 (1983), held that
benedictions and invocations at public school graduations are not
always unconstitutional.  In Marsh we upheld the
constitutionality of the Nebraska State Legislature's practice of
opening each of its sessions with a prayer offered by a chaplain
paid out of public funds.  The District Court in this case
disagreed with the Sixth Circuit's reasoning because it believed
that Marsh was a narrow decision, "limited to the unique
situation of legislative prayer," and did not have any relevance
to school prayer cases.  728 F.  Supp., at 74.

/* This is quite simply because adults, and state legislators at
that can either safely ignore the prayer, or, walk out. That
choice is unrealistic for a child. */

 On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the
First Circuit affirmed.  The majority opinion by Judge Torruella
adopted the opinion of the District Court.  908 F.2d 1090 (1990).
Judge Bownes joined the majority, but wrote a separate concurring
opinion in which he decided that the practices challenged here
violated all three parts of the Lemon test.  Judge Bownes went on
to agree with the District Court that Marsh had no application to
school prayer cases and that the Stein decision was flawed.  He
concluded by suggesting that under Establishment Clause rules no
prayer, even one excluding any mention of the Deity, could be
offered at a public school graduation ceremony.  908 F.2d, at
1090-1097.  Judge Campbell dissented, on the basis of Marsh and
Stein.  He reasoned that if the prayers delivered were
nonsectarian, and if school officials ensured that persons
representing a variety of beliefs and ethical systems were
invited to present invocations and benedictions, there was no
violation of the Establishment Clause.  908 F. 2d, at 1099.  We
granted certiorari, 499 U. S. ___ (1991), and now affirm.

II

 These dominant facts mark and control the confines of our
decision:  State officials direct the performance of a formal
religious exercise at promotional and graduation ceremonies for
secondary schools.  Even for those students who object to the
religious exercise, their attendance and participation in the
state-sponsored religious activity are in a fair and real sense
obligatory, though the school district does not require
attendance as a condition for receipt of the diploma.

 This case does not require us to revisit the difficult
questions dividing us in recent cases, questions of the
definition and full scope of the principles governing the extent
of permitted accommodation by the State for the religious beliefs
and practices of many of its citizens.  See Allegheny County v.
Greater Pittsburgh ACLU, 492 U. S. 573 (1989); Wallace v.
Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38 (1985); Lynch v.  Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668
(1984).  For without reference to those principles in other
contexts, the controlling precedents as they relate to prayer and
religious exercise in primary and secondary public schools compel
the holding here that the policy of the city of Providence is an
unconstitutional one.  We can decide the case without
reconsidering the general constitutional framework by which
public schools' efforts to accommodate religion are measured.
Thus we do not accept the invitation of petitioners and amicus
the United States to reconsider our decision in Lemon v.
Kurtzman, supra.  The government involvement with
religious activity in this case is pervasive, to the point of
creating a state-sponsored and state-directed religious exercise
in a public school.  Conducting this formal religious observance
conflicts with settled rules pertaining to prayer exercises for
students, and that suffices to determine the question before us.

 The principle that government may accommodate the free
exercise of religion does not supersede the fundamental
limitations imposed by the Establishment Clause.  It is beyond
dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that
government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in
religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which
"establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to
do so." Lynch, supra, at 678; see also Allegheny County, supra,
at 591 quoting Everson v.  Board of Education of Ewing, 330 U. S.
1, 15-16 (1947).  The State's involvement in the school prayers
challenged today violates these central principles.

 That involvement is as troubling as it is undenied.  A
school official, the principal, decided that an invocation and a
benediction should be given; this is a choice attributable to the
State, and from a constitutional perspective it is as if a state
statute decreed that the prayers must occur.  The principal chose
the religious participant, here a rabbi, and that choice is also
attributable to the State.  The reason for the choice of a rabbi
is not disclosed by the record, but the potential for
divisiveness over the choice of a particular member of the clergy
to conduct the ceremony is apparent.

 Divisiveness, of course, can attend any state decision
respecting religions, and neither its existence nor its potential
necessarily invalidates the State's attempts to accommodate
religion in all cases.  The potential for divisiveness is of
particular relevance here though, because it centers around an
overt religious exercise in a secondary school environment where,
as we discuss below, see infra, at __, subtle coercive pressures
exist and where the student had no real alternative which would
have allowed her to avoid the fact or appearance of
participation.

 The State's role did not end with the decision to include
a prayer and with the choice of clergyman.  Principal Lee
provided Rabbi Gutterman with a copy of the "Guidelines for Civic
Occasions," and advised him that his prayers should be
nonsectarian.  Through these means the principal directed and
controlled the content of the prayer.  Even if the only sanction
for ignoring the instructions were that the rabbi would not be
invited back, we think no religious representative who valued his
or her continued reputation and effectiveness in the community
would incur the State's displeasure in this regard.  It is a
cornerstone principle of our Establishment Clause jurisprudence
that "it is no part of the business of government to compose
official prayers for any group of the American people to recite
as a part of a religious program carried on by government," Engel
v.  Vitale, 370 U. S. 421, 425 (1962), and that is what the
school officials attempted to do.

 Petitioners argue, and we find nothing in the case to
refute it, that the directions for the content of the prayers
were a good-faith attempt by the school to ensure that the
sectarianism which is so often the flashpoint for religious
animosity be removed from the graduation ceremony.  The concern
is understandable, as a prayer which uses ideas or images
identified with a particular religion may foster a different sort
of sectarian rivalry than an invocation or benediction in terms
more neutral.  The school's explanation, however, does not
resolve the dilemma caused by its participation.  The question is
not the good faith of the school in attempting to make the prayer
acceptable to most persons, but the legitimacy of its undertaking
that enterprise at all when the object is to produce a prayer to
be used in a formal religious exercise which students, for all
practical purposes, are obliged to attend.

 We are asked to recognize the existence of a practice of
nonsectarian prayer, prayer within the embrace of what is known
as the Judeo-Christian tradition, prayer which is more acceptable
than one which, for example, makes explicit references to the God
of Israel, or to Jesus Christ, or to a patron saint.  There may
be some support, as an empirical observation, to the statement of
the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, picked up by Judge
Campbell's dissent in the Court of Appeals in this case, that
there has emerged in this country a civic religion, one which is
tolerated when sectarian exercises are not.  Stein, 822 F.  2d,
at 1409; 908 F.2d 1090, 1098-1099 (CA1 1990) (Campbell, J.,
dissenting) (case below); see also Note, Civil Religion and the
Establishment Clause, 95 Yale L.J. 1237 (1986).  If common ground
can be defined which permits once conflicting faiths to express
the shared conviction that there is an ethic and a morality which
transcend human invention, the sense of community and purpose
sought by all decent societies might be advanced.  But though the
First Amendment does not allow the government to stifle prayers
which aspire to these ends, neither does it permit the government
to undertake that task for itself.

/* And what of those who are Muslim, Hindu or atheist? The first
amendment protect the single individual against the "reasonable"
dictates of the majority. */

 The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that
religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be
either proscribed or prescribed by the State.  The design of the
Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious
beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to
the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom to pursue
that mission.  It must not be forgotten then, that while concern
must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or
a dissenting non- believer, these same Clauses exist to protect
religion from government interference.  James Madison, the
principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his
opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground of its
effect on the minority.  A principal ground for his view was:
"[E]xperience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments,
instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have
had a contrary operation." Memorial and Remonstrance Against
Religious Assessments (1785), in 8 Papers of James Madison 301
(W. Rachal, R. Rutland, B. Ripel, & F.Teute eds. 1973).

 These concerns have particular application in the case of
school officials, whose effort to monitor prayer will be
perceived by the students as inducing a participation they might
otherwise reject.  Though the efforts of the school officials in
this case to find common ground appear to have been a good-faith
attempt to recognize the common aspects of religions and not the
divisive ones, our precedents do not permit school officials to
assist in composing prayers as an incident to a formal exercise
for their students.  Engel v.  Vitale, supra, at 425.  And these
same precedents caution us to measure the idea of a civic
religion against the central meaning of the Religion Clauses of
the First Amendment, which is that all creeds must be tolerated
and none favored.  The suggestion that government may establish
an official or civic religion as a means of avoiding the
establishment of a religion with more specific creeds strikes us
as a contradiction that cannot be accepted.

 The degree of school involvement here made it clear that
the graduation prayers bore the imprint of the State and thus put
school-age children who objected in an untenable position.  We
turn our attention now to consider the position of the students,
both those who desired the prayer and she who did not.

 To endure the speech of false ideas or offensive content
and then to counter it is part of learning how to live in a
pluralistic society, a society which insists upon open discourse
towards the end of a tolerant citizenry.  And tolerance
presupposes some mutuality of obligation.  It is argued that our
constitutional vision of a free society requires confidence in
our own ability to accept or reject ideas of which we do not
approve, and that prayer at a high school graduation does nothing
more than offer a choice.  By the time they are seniors, high
school students no doubt have been required to attend classes and
assemblies and to complete assignments exposing them to ideas
they find distasteful or immoral or absurd or all of these.
Against this background, students may consider it an odd measure
of justice to be subjected during the course of their educations
to ideas deemed offensive and irreligious, but to be denied a
brief, formal prayer ceremony that the school offers in return.
This argument cannot prevail, however.  It overlooks a
fundamental dynamic of the Constitution.

 The First Amendment protects speech and religion by quite
different mechanisms.  Speech is protected by insuring its full
expression even when the government participates, for the very
object of some of our most important speech is to persuade the
government to adopt an idea as its own.  Meese v. Keene, 481 U.
S. 465, 480-481 (1987); see also Keller v. State Bar of
California, 496 U. S. 1, 10-11 (1990); Abood v. Detroit Board of
Education, 431 U. S. 209 (1977).  The method for protecting
freedom of worship and freedom of conscience in religious matters
is quite the reverse.  In religious debate or expression the
government is not a prime participant, for the Framers deemed
religious establishment antithetical to the freedom of all.  The
Free Exercise Clause embraces a freedom of conscience and worship
that has close parallels in the speech provisions of the First
Amendment, but the Establishment Clause is a specific prohibition
on forms of state intervention in religious affairs with no
precise counterpart in the speech provisions.  Buckley v. Valeo,
424 U. S. 1, 92-93, and n. 127 (1976) (per curiam).  The
explanation lies in the lesson of history that was and is the
inspiration for the Establishment Clause, the lesson that in the
hands of government what might begin as a tolerant expression of
religious views may end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce.
A state- created orthodoxy puts at grave risk that freedom of
belief and conscience which are the sole assurance that religious
faith is real, not imposed.

 The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the
modern world as in the 18th Century when it was written.
One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-
sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to
guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief
which is the mark of a free people.  To compromise that principle
today would be to deny our own tradition and forfeit our standing
to urge others to secure the protections of that tradition for
themselves.

 As we have observed before, there are heightened concerns
with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive
pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools.  See,
e.g., Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 307
(1963) (Goldberg, J., concurring); Edwards v.  Aguillard, 482 U.
S. 578, 584 (1987); Westside Community Bd. of Ed. v. Mergens, 496
U. S. 226, 261-262 (1990) (Kennedy, J., concurring).  Our
decisions in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S. 421 (1962), and Abington
School District, supra, recognize, among other things, that
prayer exercises in public schools carry a particular risk of
indirect coercion.  The concern may not be limited to the context
of schools, but it is most pronounced there.  See Allegheny
County v.  Greater Pittsburgh ACLU, 492 U. S., at 661 (Kennedy,
J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).  What
to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request
that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a
school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be
an attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a
religious orthodoxy.

 We need not look beyond the circumstances of this case to
see the phenomenon at work.  The undeniable fact is
that the school district's supervision and control of a high
school graduation ceremony places public pressure, as well as
peer pressure, on attending students to stand as a group or, at
least, maintain respectful silence during the Invocation and
Benediction.  This pressure, though subtle and indirect, can be
as real as any overt compulsion.  Of course, in our culture
standing or remaining silent can signify adherence to a view or
simple respect for the views of others.  And no doubt some
persons who have no desire to join a prayer have little objection
to standing as a sign of respect for those who do.  But for the
dissenter of high school age, who has a reasonable perception
that she is being forced by the State to pray in a manner her
conscience will not allow, the injury is no less real.  There can
be no doubt that for many, if not most, of the students at the
graduation, the act of standing or remaining silent was an
expression of participation in the Rabbi's prayer.  That was the
very point of the religious exercise.  It is of little comfort to
a dissenter, then, to be told that for her the act of standing or
remaining in silence signifies mere respect, rather than
participation.  What matters is that, given our social
conventions, a reasonable dissenter in this milieu could believe
that the group exercise signified her own participation or
approval of it.

/* A fair and well reasoned indication of why a person might find
being forced to respect school prayers as a form of assent. */

 Finding no violation under these circumstances would
place objectors in the dilemma of participating, with all that
implies, or protesting.  We do not address whether that choice is
acceptable if the affected citizens are mature adults, but we
think the State may not, consistent with the Establishment
Clause, place primary and secondary school children in this
position.  Research in psychology supports the common assumption
that adolescents are often susceptible to pressure from their
peers towards conformity, and that the influence is strongest in
matters of social convention.  Brittain, Adolescent Choices and
Parent-Peer Cross- Pressures, 28 Am. Sociological Rev. 385 (June
1963); Clasen & Brown, The Multidimensionality of Peer Pressure
in Adolescence, 14 J. of Youth and Adolescence 451 (Dec.  1985);
Brown, Clasen, & Eicher, Perceptions of Peer Pressure, Peer
Conformity Dispositions, and Self-Reported Behavior Among
Adolescents, 22 Developmental Psychology 521 (July 1986).  To
recognize that the choice imposed by the State constitutes an
unacceptable constraint only acknowledges that the government may
no more use social pressure to enforce orthodoxy than it may use
more direct means.

 The injury caused by the government's action, and the
reason why Daniel and Deborah Weisman object to it, is that the
State, in a school setting, in effect required participation in a
religious exercise.  It is, we concede, a brief exercise during
which the individual can concentrate on joining its message,
meditate on her own religion, or let her mind wander.  But the
embarrassment and the intrusion of the religious exercise cannot
be refuted by arguing that these prayers, and similar ones to be
said in the future, are of a de minimis character.  To do so
would be an affront to the Rabbi who offered them and to all
those for whom the prayers were an essential and profound
recognition of divine authority.  And for the same reason, we
think that the intrusion is greater than the two minutes or so of
time consumed for prayers like these.  Assuming, as we must, that
the prayers were offensive to the student and the parent who now
object, the intrusion was both real and, in the context of a
secondary school, a violation of the objectors' rights.  That the
intrusion was in the course of promulgating religion that sought
to be civic or nonsectarian rather than pertaining to one sect
does not lessen the offense or isolation to the objectors.  At
best it narrows their number, at worst increases their sense of
isolation and affront.  See supra, at __.

 There was a stipulation in the District Court that
attendance at graduation and promotional ceremonies is voluntary.
Statement of Agreed Facts -41, App. 18.  Petitioners and the
United States, as amicus, made this a center point of the case,
arguing that the option of not attending the graduation excuses
any inducement or coercion in the ceremony itself.  The argument
lacks all persuasion.  Law reaches past formalism.  And to say a
teenage student has a real choice not to attend her high school
graduation is formalistic in the extreme.  True, Deborah could
elect not to attend commencement without renouncing her diploma;
but we shall not allow the case to turn on this point.  Everyone
knows that in our society and in our culture high school
graduation is one of life's most significant occasions.  A school
rule which excuses attendance is beside the point.  Attendance
may not be required by official decree, yet it is apparent that a
student is not free to absent herself from the graduation
exercise in any real sense of the term "voluntary," for absence
would require forfeiture of those intangible benefits which have
motivated the student through youth and all her high school
years.  Graduation is a time for family and those closest to the
student to celebrate success and express mutual wishes of
gratitude and respect, all to the end of impressing upon the
young person the role that it is his or her right and duty to
assume in the community and all of its diverse parts.

 The importance of the event is the point the school
district and the United States rely upon to argue that a formal
prayer ought to be permitted, but it becomes one of the principal
reasons why their argument must fail.  Their contention, one of
considerable force were it not for the constitutional constraints
applied to state action, is that the prayers are an essential
part of these ceremonies because for many persons an occasion of
this significance lacks meaning if there is no recognition,
however brief, that human achievements cannot be understood apart
from their spiritual essence.  We think the Government's position
that this interest suffices to force students to choose between
compliance or forfeiture demonstrates fundamental inconsistency
in its argumentation.  It fails to acknowledge that what for many
of Deborah's classmates and their parents was a spiritual
imperative was for Daniel and Deborah Weisman religious
conformance compelled by the State.  While in some societies the
wishes of the majority might prevail, the Establishment Clause of
the First Amendment is addressed to this contingency and rejects
the balance urged upon us.  The Constitution forbids the State to
exact religious conformity from a student as the price of
attending her own high school graduation.  This is the calculus
the Constitution commands.

 The Government's argument gives insufficient recognition
to the real conflict of conscience faced by the young student.
The essence of the Government's position is that with
regard to a civic, social occasion of this importance it is the
objector, not the majority, who must take unilateral and private
action to avoid compromising religious scruples, here by electing
to miss the graduation exercise.  This turns conventional First
Amendment analysis on