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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that
corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 90-1014
--------
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 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 Weis-
man, 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 acknowl-
edge 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 acknowledge-
ment 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.  Debo-
rah 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 Provi-
dence 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.
  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 govern-
mental 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 Commu-
nity 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.
  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 other-
wise 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 explana-
tion, 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 enter-
prise 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 Camp-
bell'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) (Camp-
bell, 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.
  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]x-
perience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments,
instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion,
have had a contrary operation.''  Memorial and Remon-
strance 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 contradic-
tion 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 educa-
tions 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 insur-
ing its full expression even when the government partici-
pates, 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 Establish-
ment 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 con-
science 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 Invoca-
tion 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 con-
science 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.
  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 suscepti-
ble to pressure from their peers towards conformity, and
that the influence is strongest in matters of social conven-
tion.  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 intru-
sion 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 recogni-
tion 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 nonsec-
tarian 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 atten-
dance at graduation and promotional ceremonies is volun-
tary.  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 incon-
sistency 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 i