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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 90-1014
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ROBERT E. LEE, individually and as PRINCIPAL OF
NATHAN BISHOP MIDDLE SCHOOL, et al.,
PETITIONERS v. DANIEL WEISMAN etc.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the first circuit
[June 24, 1992]


  Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens and
Justice O'Connor join, concurring.
  I join the whole of the Court's opinion, and fully agree
that prayers at public school graduation ceremonies
indirectly coerce religious observance.  I write separately
nonetheless on two issues of Establishment Clause analysis
that underlie my independent resolution of this case:
whether the Clause applies to governmental practices that
do not favor one religion or denomination over others, and
whether state coercion of religious conformity, over and
above state endorsement of religious exercise or belief, is a
necessary element of an Establishment Clause violation.

                            I
  Forty-five years ago, this Court announced a basic
principle of constitutional law from which it has not
strayed: the Establishment Clause forbids not only state
practices that -aid one religion . . . or prefer one religion
over another,- but also those that -aid all religions.-
Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 15
(1947).  Today we reaffirm that principle, holding that the
Establishment Clause forbids state-sponsored prayers in
public school settings no matter how nondenominational the
prayers may be.  In barring the State from sponsoring
generically Theistic prayers where it could not sponsor
sectarian ones, we hold true to a line of precedent from
which there is no adequate historical case to depart.

                            A
  Since Everson, we have consistently held the Clause
applicable no less to governmental acts favoring religion
generally than to acts favoring one religion over others.
Thus, in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S. 421 (1962), we held that
the public schools may not subject their students to read-
ings of any prayer, however -denominationally neutral.-
Id., at 430.  More recently, in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S.
38 (1985), we held that an Alabama moment-of-silence
statute passed for the sole purpose of -returning voluntary
prayer to public schools,- id., at 57, violated the Establish-
ment Clause even though it did not encourage students to
pray to any particular deity.  We said that -when the
underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of
litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the
individual freedom of conscience protected by the First
Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith
or none at all.-  Id., at 52-53.  This conclusion, we held,
-derives support not only from the interest in respect-
ing the individual's freedom of conscience, but also
from the conviction that religious beliefs worthy of
respect are the product of free and voluntary choice by
the faithful, and from recognition of the fact that the
political interest in forestalling intolerance extends
beyond intolerance among Christian sects-or even
intolerance among `religions'-to encompass intolerance
of the disbeliever and the uncertain.-  Id., at 53-54
(footnotes omitted).
  Likewise, in Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U. S. 1
(1989), we struck down a state tax exemption benefiting
only religious periodicals; even though the statute in
question worked no discrimination among sects, a majority
of the Court found that its preference for religious publica-
tions over all other kinds -effectively endorses religious
belief.-  Id., at 17 (plurality opinion); see id., at 28
(Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment) (-A statutory
preference for the dissemination of religious ideas offends
our most basic understanding of what the Establishment
Clause is all about and hence is constitutionally intolera-
ble-).  And in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488 (1961), we
struck down a provision of the Maryland Constitution
requiring public officials to declare a -`belief in the exis-
tence of God,'- id., at 489, reasoning that, under the
Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, -neither a State
nor the Federal Government . . . can constitutionally pass
laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as
against non-believers . . . ,- id., at 495.  See also Epperson
v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 104 (1968) (-The First Amend-
ment mandates governmental neutrality between religion
and religion, and between religion and nonreligion-); School
Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 216 (1963)
(-this Court has rejected unequivocally the contention that
the Establishment Clause forbids only governmental
preference of one religion over another-); id., at 319-320
(Stewart, J., dissenting) (the Clause applies -to each of us,
be he Jew or Agnostic, Christian or Atheist, Buddhist or
Freethinker-).
  Such is the settled law.  Here, as elsewhere, we should
stick to it absent some compelling reason to discard it.  See
Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203, 212 (1984); Payne v.
Tennessee, 501 U. S. --, -- (1991) (slip op., at 8)
(Souter, J., concurring).



                            B
  Some have challenged this precedent by reading the
Establishment Clause to permit -nonpreferential- state
promotion of religion.  The challengers argue that, as
originally understood by the Framers, -[t]he Establishment
Clause did not require government neutrality between
religion and irreligion nor did it prohibit the Federal
Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to
religion.-  Wallace, supra, at 106 (Rehnquist, J., dissent-
ing); see also R. Cord, Separation of Church and State:
Historical Fact and Current Fiction (1988).  While a case
has been made for this position, it is not so convincing as to
warrant reconsideration of our settled law; indeed, I find in
the history of the Clause's textual development a more
powerful argument supporting the Court's jurisprudence
following Everson.
  When James Madison arrived at the First Congress with
a series of proposals to amend the National Constitution,
one of the provisions read that -[t]he civil rights of none
shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship,
nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the
full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on
any pretext, infringed.-  1 Annals of Cong. 434 (1789).
Madison's language did not last long.  It was sent to a
Select Committee of the House, which, without explanation,
changed it to read that -no religion shall be established by
law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed.-
Id., at 729.  Thence the proposal went to the Committee of
the Whole, which was in turn dissatisfied with the Select
Committee's language and adopted an alternative proposed
by Samuel Livermore of New Hampshire:  -Congress shall
make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of
conscience.-  See id., at 731.  Livermore's proposal would
have forbidden laws having anything to do with religion
and was thus not only far broader than Madison's version,
but broader even than the scope of the Establishment
Clause as we now understand it.  See, e.g., Corporation of
Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327 (1987) (upholding legislative
exemption of religious groups from certain obligations under
civil rights laws).
  The House rewrote the amendment once more before
sending it to the Senate, this time adopting, without
recorded debate, language derived from a proposal by
Fisher Ames of Massachusetts:  -Congress shall make no
law establishing Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be infringed.-  1
Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the
United States of America 136 (Senate Journal) (L. de Pauw
ed. 1972); see 1 Annals of Cong. 765 (1789).  Perhaps, on
further reflection, the Representatives had thought Liver-
more's proposal too expansive, or perhaps, as one historian
has suggested, they had simply worried that his language
would not -satisfy the demands of those who wanted
something said specifically against establishments of
religion.-  L. Levy, The Establishment Clause 81 (1986)
(hereinafter Levy).  We do not know; what we do know is
that the House rejected the Select Committee's version,
which arguably ensured only that -no religion- enjoyed an
official preference over others, and deliberately chose
instead a prohibition extending to laws establishing
-religion- in general.
  The sequence of the Senate's treatment of this House
proposal, and the House's response to the Senate, confirm
that the Framers meant the Establishment Clause's
prohibition to encompass nonpreferential aid to religion.  In
September 1789, the Senate considered a number of
provisions that would have permitted such aid, and ulti-
mately it adopted one of them.  First, it briefly entertained
this language:  -Congress shall make no law establishing
One Religious Sect or Society in preference to others, nor
shall the rights of conscience be infringed.-  1 Documentary
History, supra, at 151 (Senate Journal).  After rejecting two
minor amendments to that proposal, see ibid., the Senate
dropped it altogether and chose a provision identical to the
House's proposal, but without the clause protecting the
-rights of conscience,- ibid.  With no record of the Senate
debates, we cannot know what prompted these changes, but
the record does tell us that, six days later, the Senate went
half circle and adopted its narrowest language yet:  -Con-
gress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a
mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of reli-
gion.-  Id., at 166.  The Senate sent this proposal to the
House along with its versions of the other constitutional
amendments proposed.
  Though it accepted much of the Senate's work on the Bill
of Rights, the House rejected the Senate's version of the
Establishment Clause and called for a joint conference
committee, to which the Senate agreed.  The House
conferees ultimately won out, persuading the Senate to
accept this as the final text of the Religion Clauses:
-Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.-  What
is remarkable is that, unlike the earliest House drafts or
the final Senate proposal, the prevailing language is not
limited to laws respecting an establishment of -a religion,-
-a national religion,- -one religious sect,- or specific -articles
of faith.-  The Framers repeatedly considered and deliber-
ately rejected such narrow language and instead extended
their prohibition to state support for -religion- in general.
  Implicit in their choice is the distinction between prefer-
ential and nonpreferential establishments, which the weight
of evidence suggests the Framers appreciated.  See, e.g.,
Laycock, -Nonpreferential- Aid 902-906; Levy 91-119.  But
cf. T. Curry, The First Freedoms 208-222 (1986).  Of
particular note, the Framers were vividly familiar with
efforts in the colonies and, later, the States to impose
general, nondenominational assessments and other inci-
dents of ostensibly ecumenical establishments.  See gener-
ally Levy 1-62.  The Virginia Statute for Religious Free-
dom, written by Jefferson and sponsored by Madison,
captured the separationist response to such measures.
Condemning all establishments, however nonpreferentialist,
the Statute broadly guaranteed that -no man shall be
compelled to frequent or support any religious worship,
place, or ministry whatsoever,- including his own.  Act for
Establishing Religious Freedom (1785), in 5 The Founders'
Constitution 84, 85 (P. Kurland & R. Lerner eds. 1987).
Forcing a citizen to support even his own church would,
among other things, deny -the ministry those temporary
rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their
personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest
and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind.-
Id, at 84.  In general, Madison later added, -religion &
Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are
mixed together.-  Letter from J. Madison to E. Livingston,
10 July 1822, in 5 The Founders' Constitution, at 105, 106.
  What we thus know of the Framers' experience under-
scores the observation of one prominent commentator, that
confining the Establishment Clause to a prohibition on
preferential aid -requires a premise that the Framers were
extraordinarily bad drafters-that they believed one thing
but adopted language that said something substantially
different, and that they did so after repeatedly attending to
the choice of language.-  Laycock, ``Nonpreferential'' Aid
882-883; see also Allegheny County v. American Civil
Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573,
647-648 (1989) (opinion of Stevens, J.).  We must presume,
since there is no conclusive evidence to the contrary, that
the Framers embraced the significance of their textual judg-
ment.  Thus, on balance, history neither contradicts nor
warrants reconsideration of the settled principle that the
Establishment Clause forbids support for religion in general
no less than support for one religion or some.

                            C
  While these considerations are, for me, sufficient to reject
the nonpreferentialist position, one further concern ani-
mates my judgment.  In many contexts, including this one,
nonpreferentialism requires some distinction between
-sectarian- religious practices and those that would be, by
some measure, ecumenical enough to pass Establishment
Clause muster.  Simply by requiring the enquiry, nonprefer-
entialists invite the courts to engage in comparative
theology.  I can hardly imagine a subject less amenable to
the competence of the federal judiciary, or more deliberately
to be avoided where possible.
  This case is nicely in point.  Since the nonpreferentiality
of a prayer must be judged by its text, Justice Blackmun
pertinently observes, ante, at 6, n. 5, that Rabbi Gutterman
drew his exhortation -[t]o do justly, to love mercy, to walk
humbly- straight from the King James version of Micah, ch.
6, v. 8.  At some undefinable point, the similarities between
a state-sponsored prayer and the sacred text of a specific
religion would so closely identify the former with the latter
that even a nonpreferentialist would have to concede a
breach of the Establishment Clause.  And even if Micah's
thought is sufficiently generic for most believers, it still
embodies a straightforwardly Theistic premise, and so does
the Rabbi's prayer.  Many Americans who consider them-
selves religious are not Theistic; some, like several of the
Framers, are Deists who would question Rabbi Gutterman's
plea for divine advancement of the country's political and
moral good.  Thus, a nonpreferentialist who would condemn
subjecting public school graduates to, say, the Anglican
liturgy would still need to explain why the government's
preference for Theistic over non-Theistic religion is
constitutional.
  Nor does it solve the problem to say that the State should
promote a -diversity- of religious views; that position would
necessarily compel the government and, inevitably, the
courts to make wholly inappropriate judgments about the
number of religions the State should sponsor and the
relative frequency with which it should sponsor each.  In
fact, the prospect would be even worse than that.  As
Madison observed in criticizing religious presidential
proclamations, the practice of sponsoring religious messages
tends, over time, -to narrow the recommendation to the
standard of the predominant sect.-  Madison's -Detached
Memoranda,- 3 Wm. & Mary Q. 534, 561 (E. Fleet ed. 1946)
(hereinafter Madison's ``Detached Memoranda'').  We have
not changed much since the days of Madison, and the
judiciary should not willingly enter the political arena to
battle the centripetal force leading from religious pluralism
to official preference for the faith with the most votes.

                           II
  Petitioners rest most of their argument on a theory that,
whether or not the Establishment Clause permits extensive
nonsectarian support for religion, it does not forbid the
state to sponsor affirmations of religious belief that coerce
neither support for religion nor participation in religious
observance.  I appreciate the force of some of the arguments
supporting a -coercion- analysis of the Clause.  See gener-
ally Allegheny County, supra, at 655-679 (opinion of
Kennedy, J.); McConnell, Coercion: The Lost Element of
Establishment, 27 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 933 (1986).  But we
could not adopt that reading without abandoning our
settled law, a course that, in my view, the text of the
Clause would not readily permit.  Nor does the extratextual
evidence of original meaning stand so unequivocally at odds
with the textual premise inherent in existing precedent that
we should fundamentally reconsider our course.

                            A
  Over the years, this Court has declared the invalidity of
many noncoercive state laws and practices conveying a
message of religious endorsement.  For example, in Alle-
gheny County, supra, we forbade the prominent display of
a nativity scene on public property; without contesting the
dissent's observation that the cr-che coerced no one into
accepting or supporting whatever message it proclaimed,
five Members of the Court found its display unconstitu-
tional as a state endorsement of Christianity.  Id., at
589-594, 598-602.  Likewise, in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472
U. S. 38 (1985), we struck down a state law requiring a
moment of silence in public classrooms not because the
statute coerced students to participate in prayer (for it did
not), but because the manner of its enactment -convey[ed]
a message of state approval of prayer activities in the public
schools.-  Id., at 61; see also id., at 67-84 (O'Connor, J.,
concurring in judgment).  Cf. Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S., at
431 (-When the power, prestige and financial support of
government is placed behind a particular religious belief,
the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to
conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is
plain.  But the purposes underlying the Establishment
Clause go much further than that-).
  In Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97 (1968), we invali-
dated a state law that barred the teaching of Darwin's
theory of evolution because, even though the statute
obviously did not coerce anyone to support religion or
participate in any religious practice, it was enacted for a
singularly religious purpose.  See also Edwards v.
Aguillard, 482 U. S. 578, 593 (1987) (statute requiring
instruction in -creation science- -endorses religion in
violation of the First Amendment-).  And in School Dist. of
Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U. S. 373 (1985), we invalidated
a program whereby the State sent public school teachers to
parochial schools to instruct students on ostensibly nonreli-
gious matters; while the scheme clearly did not coerce
anyone to receive or subsidize religious instruction, we held
it invalid because, among other things, -[t]he symbolic
union of church and state inherent in the [program]
threatens to convey a message of state support for religion
to students and to the general public.-  Id., at 397; see also
Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U. S., at 17 (plurality
opinion) (tax exemption benefiting only religious publica-
tions -effectively endorses religious belief-); id., at 28
(Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment) (exemption
unconstitutional because State -engaged in preferential
support for the communication of religious messages-).
  Our precedents may not always have drawn perfectly
straight lines.  They simply cannot, however, support the
position that a showing of coercion is necessary to a
successful Establishment Clause claim.

                            B
  Like the provisions about -due- process and -unreason-
able- searches and seizures, the constitutional language
forbidding laws -respecting an establishment of religion- is
not pellucid.  But virtually everyone acknowledges that the
Clause bans more than formal establishments of religion in
the traditional sense, that is, massive state support for
religion through, among other means, comprehensive
schemes of taxation.  See generally Levy 1-62 (discussing
such establishments in the colonies and early States).  This
much follows from the Framers' explicit rejection of simpler
provisions prohibiting either the establishment of a religion
or laws -establishing religion- in favor of the broader ban
on laws -respecting an establishment of religion.-  See
supra, at 4-6.
  While some argue that the Framers added the word
-respecting- simply to foreclose federal interference with
State establishments of religion, see, e.g., Amar, The Bill of
Rights as a Constitution, 100 Yale L. J. 1131, 1157 (1991),
the language sweeps more broadly than that.  In Madison's
words, the Clause in its final form forbids -everything like-
a national religious establishment, see Madison's -Detached
Memoranda- 558, and, after incorporation, it forbids
-everything like- a State religious establishment.  Cf.
Allegheny County, 492 U. S., at 649 (opinion of Stevens,
J.).  The sweep is broad enough that Madison himself
characterized congressional provisions for legislative and
military chaplains as unconstitutional -establishments.-
Madison's -Detached Memoranda- 558-559; see infra, at
16-17, and n. 6.
  While petitioners insist that the prohibition extends only
to the -coercive- features and incidents of establishment,
they cannot easily square that claim with the constitutional
text.  The First Amendment forbids not just laws -respect-
ing an establishment of religion,- but also those -prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.-  Yet laws that coerce nonadher-
ents to -support or participate in any religion or its exer-
cise,- Allegheny County, supra, at 659-660 (opinion of
Kennedy, J.), would virtually by definition violate their
right to religious free exercise.  See Employment Div., Dept.
of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872, 877
(1990) (under Free Exercise Clause, -government may not
compel affirmation of religious belief-), citing Torcaso v.
Watkins, 367 U. S. 488 (1961); see also J. Madison, Memori-
al and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785)
(compelling support for religious establishments violates
-free exercise of Religion-), quoted in 5 The Founders'
Constitution, at 82, 84.  Thus, a literal application of the
coercion test would render the Establishment Clause a vir-
tual nullity, as petitioners' counsel essentially conceded at
oral argument.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 18.
  Our cases presuppose as much; as we said in School Dist.
of Abington, supra, -[t]he distinction between the two
clauses is apparent-a violation of the Free Exercise Clause
is predicated on coercion while the Establishment Clause
violation need not be so attended.-  374 U. S., at 223; see
also Laycock, ``Nonpreferential'' Aid 922 (-If coercion is . . .
an element of the establishment clause, establishment adds
nothing to free exercise-).  While one may argue that the
Framers meant the Establishment Clause simply to
ornament the First Amendment, cf. T. Curry, The First
Freedoms 216-217 (1986), that must be a reading of last
resort.  Without compelling evidence to the contrary, we
should presume that the Framers meant the Clause to
stand for something more than petitioners attribute to it.


                            C
  Petitioners argue from the political setting in which the
Establishment Clause was framed, and from the Framers'
own political practices following ratification, that govern-
ment may constitutionally endorse religion so long as it
does not coerce religious conformity.  The setting and the
practices warrant canvassing, but while they yield some
evidence for petitioners' argument, they do not reveal the
degree of consensus in early constitutional thought that
would raise a threat to stare decisis by challenging the pre-
sumption that the Establishment Clause adds something to
the Free Exercise Clause that follows it.
  The Framers adopted the Religion Clauses in response to
a long tradition of coercive state support for religion,
particularly in the form of tax assessments, but their
special antipathy to religious coercion did not exhaust their
hostility to the features and incidents of establishment.
Indeed, Jefferson and Madison opposed any political appro-
priation of religion, see infra, at 15-18 and, even when
challenging the hated assessments, they did not always
temper their rhetoric with distinctions between coercive and
noncoercive state action.  When, for example, Madison
criticized Virginia's general assessment bill, he invoked
principles antithetical to all state efforts to promote
religion.  An assessment, he wrote, is improper not simply
because it forces people to donate -three pence- to religion,
but, more broadly, because -it is itself a signal of persecu-
tion.  It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those
whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the
Legislative authority.-  J. Madison, Memorial and Remon-
strance Against Religious Assessments (1785), in 5 The
Founders' Constitution, at 83.  Madison saw that, even
without the tax collector's participation, an official endorse-
ment of religion can impair religious liberty.
  Petitioners contend that because the early Presidents
included religious messages in their inaugural and Thanks-
giving Day addresses, the Framers could not have meant
the Establishment Clause to forbid noncoercive state
endorsement of religion.  The argument ignores the fact,
however, that Americans today find such proclamations less
controversial than did the founding generation, whose
published thoughts on the matter belie petitioners' claim.
President Jefferson, for example, steadfastly refused to
issue Thanksgiving proclamations of any kind, in part
because he thought they violated the Religion Clauses.
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Rev. S. Miller (Jan. 23,
1808), in 5 The Founders' Constitution, at 98.  In explaining
his views to the Reverend Samuel Miller, Jefferson effec-
tively anticipated, and rejected, petitioners' position:
``[I]t is only proposed that I should recommend, not
prescribe a day of fasting & prayer.  That is, that I
should indirectly assume to the U. S. an authority over
religious exercises which the Constitution has directly
precluded from them.  It must be meant too that this
recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be
sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it;
not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some
degree of proscription perhaps in public opinion.''  Id.,
at 98-99 (emphasis in original).
By condemning such noncoercive state practices that, in
-recommending- the majority faith, demean religious
dissenters -in public opinion,- Jefferson necessarily con-
demned what, in modern terms, we call official endorse-
ment of religion.  He accordingly construed the Establish-
ment Clause to forbid not simply state coercion, but also
state endorsement, of religious belief and observance.  And
if he opposed impersonal presidential addresses for in-
flicting -proscription in public opinion,- all the more would
he have condemned less diffuse expressions of official
endorsement.
  During his first three years in office, James Madison also
refused to call for days of thanksgiving and prayer, though
later, amid the political turmoil of the War of 1812, he did
so on four separate occasions.  See Madison's -Detached
Memoranda,- 562, and n. 54.  Upon retirement, in an essay
condemning as an unconstitutional -establishment- the use
of public money to support congressional and military
chaplains, id., at 558-560, he concluded that -[r]eligious
proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgiv-
ings & fasts are shoots from the same root with the
legislative acts reviewed.  Altho' recommendations only,
they imply a religious agency, making no part of the trust
delegated to political rulers.-  Id., at 560.  Explaining that
-[t]he members of a Govt . . . can in no sense, be regarded
as possessing an advisory trust from their Constituents in
their religious capacities,- ibid., he further observed that
the state necessarily freights all of its religious messages
with political ones: -the idea of policy [is] associated with
religion, whatever be the mode or the occasion, when a
function of the latter is assumed by those in power.-  Id., at
562 (footnote omitted).
  Madison's failure to keep pace with his principles in the
face of congressional pressure cannot erase the principles.
He admitted to backsliding, and explained that he had
made the content of his wartime proclamations inconse-
quential enough to mitigate much of their impropriety.  See
ibid.; see also Letter from J. Madison to E. Livingston (July
10, 1822), in 5 The Founders' Constitution, at 105.  While
his writings suggest mild variations in his interpretation of
the Establishment Clause, Madison was no different in that
respect from the rest of his political generation.  That he
expressed so much doubt about the constitutionality of
religious proclamations, however, suggests a brand of
separationism stronger even than that embodied in our
traditional jurisprudence.  So too does his characterization
of public subsidies for legislative and military chaplains as
unconstitutional -establishments,- see supra, at 16-17, and
n. 6, for the federal courts, however expansive their general
view of the Establishment Clause, have upheld both
practices.  See Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783 (1983)
(legislative chaplains); Katcoff v. Marsh, 755 F. 2d 223 (CA2
1985) (military chaplains).
  To be sure, the leaders of the young Republic engaged in
some of the practices that separationists like Jefferson and
Madison criticized.  The First Congress did hire institu-
tional chaplains, see Marsh v. Chambers, supra, at 788, and
Presidents Washington and Adams unapologetically marked
days of ``public thanksgiving and prayer,'' see R. Cord,
Separation of Church and State 53 (1988).  Yet in the face
of the separationist dissent, those practices prove, at best,
that the Framers simply did not share a common under-
standing of the Establishment Clause, and, at worst, that
they, like other politicians, could raise constitutional ideals
one day and turn their backs on them the next.  -Indeed, by
1787 the provisions of the state bills of rights had become
what Madison called mere `paper parchments'-expressions
of the most laudable sentiments, observed as much in the
breach as in practice.-  Kurland, The Origins of the Religion
Clauses of the Constitution, 27 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 839,
852 (1986) (footnote omitted).  Sometimes the National
Constitution fared no better.  Ten years after proposing the
First Amendment, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition
Acts, measures patently unconstitutional by modern
standards.  If the early Congress's political actions were
determinative, and not merely relevant, evidence of consti-
tutional meaning, we would have to gut our current First
Amendment doctrine to make room for political censorship.
  While we may be unable to know for certain what the
Framers meant by the Clause, we do know that, around the
time of its ratification, a respectable body of opinion
supported a considerably broader reading than petitioners
urge upon us.  This consistency with the textual consider-
ations is enough to preclude fundamentally reexamining our
settled law, and I am accordingly left with the task of
considering whether the state practice at issue here violates
our traditional understanding of the Clause's proscriptions.

                           III
  While the Establishment Clause's concept of neutrality is
not self-revealing, our recent cases have invested it with
specific content:  the state may not favor or endorse either
religion generally over nonreligion or one religion over
others.  See, e.g., Allegheny County, 492 U. S., at 589-594,
598-602; Texas Monthly, 489 U. S., at 17 (plurality opin-
ion); id., at 28 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment);
Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U. S., at 593; School Dist. of
Grand Rapids, 473 U. S., at 389-392; Wallace v. Jaffree,
472 U. S., at 61; see also Laycock, Formal, Substantive, and
Disaggregated Neutrality Toward Religion, 39 De Paul L.
Rev. 993 (1990); cf. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602,
612-613 (1971).  This principle against favoritism and
endorsement has become the foundation of Establishment
Clause jurisprudence, ensuring that religious belief is
irrelevant to every citizen's standing in the political
community, see Allegheny County, supra, at 594; J. Madi-
son, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assess-
ments (1785), in 5 The Founders' Constitution, at 82-83,
and protecting religion from the demeaning effects of any
governmental embrace, see id., at 83.  Now, as in the early
Republic, -religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity,
the less they are mixed together.-  Letter from J. Madison
to E. Livingston (10 July 1822), in 5 The Founders' Consti-
tution, at 106.  Our aspiration to religious liberty, embodied
in the First Amendment, permits no other standard.

                            A
  That government must remain neutral in matters of
religion does not foreclose it from ever taking religion into
account.  The State may -accommodate- the free exercise of
religion by relieving people from generally applicable rules
that interfere with their religious callings.  See, e.g.,
Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327 (1987); see also
Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963).  Contrary to the
views of some, such accommodation does not necessarily
signify an official endorsement of religious observance over
disbelief.
  In everyday life, we routinely accommodate religious
beliefs that we do not share.  A Christian inviting an
Orthodox Jew to lunch might take pains to choose a kosher
restaurant; an atheist in a hurry might yield the right of
way to an Amish man steering a horse-drawn carriage.  In
so acting, we express respect for, but not endorsement of,
the fundamental values of others.  We act without express-
ing a position on the theological merit of those values or of
religious belief in general, and no one perceives us to have
taken such a position.
  The government may act likewise.  Most religions
encourage devotional practices that are at once crucial to
the lives of believers and idiosyncratic in the eyes of
nonadherents.  By definition, secular rules of general
application are drawn from the nonadherent's vantage and,
consequently, fail to take such practices into account.  Yet
when enforcement of such rules cuts across religious
sensibilities, as it often does, it puts those affected to the
choice of taking sides between God and government.  In
such circumstances, accommodating religion reveals nothing
beyond a recognition that general rules can unnecessarily
offend the religious conscience when they offend the
conscience of secular society not at all.  Cf. Welsh v. United
States, 398 U. S. 333, 340 (1970) (plurality opinion).  Thus,
in freeing the Native American Church from federal laws
forbidding peyote use, see Drug Enforcement Administra-
tion Miscellaneous Exemptions, 21 C. F. R.  1307.31
(1991), the government conveys no endorsement of peyote
rituals, the Church, or religion as such; it simply respects
the centrality of peyote to the lives of certain Americans.
See Note, The Free Exercise Boundaries of Permissible
Accommodation Under the Establishment Clause, 99 Yale
L. J. 1127, 1135-1136 (1990).

                            B
  Whatever else may define the scope of accommodation
permissible under the Establishment Clause, one require-
ment is clear:  accommodation must lift a discernible
burden on the free exercise of religion.  See Allegheny
County, supra, at 601, n. 51; id., at 631-632 (opinion of
O'Connor, J.); Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, at
348 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); see also Texas
Monthly, supra, at 18, 18-19, n. 8 (plurality opinion);
Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S., at 57-58, n. 45.  But see
Allegheny County, supra, at 663, n. 2 (opinion of Kennedy,
J.).  Concern for the position of religious individuals in the
modern regulatory state cannot justify official solicitude for
a religious practice unburdened by general rules; such
gratuitous largesse would effectively favor religion over
disbelief.  By these lights one easily sees that, in sponsoring
the graduation prayers at issue here, the State has crossed
the line from permissible accommodation to unconstitution-
al establishment.
  Religious students cannot complain that omitting prayers
from their graduation ceremony would, in any realistic
sense, -burden- their spiritual callings.  To be sure, many
of them invest this rite of passage with spiritual signifi-
cance, but they may express their religious feelings about
it before and after the ceremony.  They may even organize
a privately sponsored baccalaureate if they desire the
company of likeminded students.  Because they accordingly
have no need for the machinery of the State to affirm their
beliefs, the government's sponsorship of prayer at the
graduation ceremony is most reasonably understood as an
official endorsement of religion and, in this instance, of
Theistic religion.  One may fairly say, as one commentator
has suggested, that the government brought prayer into the
ceremony -precisely because some people want a symbolic
affirmation that government approves and endorses their
religion, and because many of the people who want this
affirmation place little or no value on the costs to religious
minorities.-  Laycock, Summary and Synthesis:  The Crisis
in Religious Liberty, 60 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 841, 844
(1992).
  Petitioners would deflect this conclusion by arguing that
graduation prayers are no different from presidential
religious proclamations and similar official -acknowledg-
ments- of religion in public life.  But religious invocations
in Thanksgiving Day addresses and the like, rarely noticed,
ignored without effort, conveyed over an impersonal
medium, and directed at no one in particular, inhabit a
pallid zone worlds apart from official prayers delivered to a
captive audience of public school students and their
families.  Madison himself respected the difference between
the trivial and the serious in constitutional practice.
Realizing that his contemporaries were unlikely to take the
Establishment Clause seriously enough to forgo a legislative
chaplainship, he suggested that -[r]ather than let this step
beyond the landmarks of power have the effect of a legiti-
mate precedent, it will be better to apply to it the legal
aphorism de minimis non curat lex . . . .-  Madison's
-Detached Memoranda- 559; see also Letter from J. Madi-
son to E. Livingston, 10 July 1822, in 5 The Founders'
Constitution, at 105.  But that logic permits no winking at
the practice in question here.  When public school officials,
armed with the State's authority, convey an endorsement of
religion to their students, they strike near the core of the
Establishment Clause.  However -ceremonial- their mes-
sages may be, they are flatly unconstitutional.