Engel V. Vitale: Court Case In The 1960's

Engel v Vitale was a very important court case in the 1960’s and dealt with freedom of speech and how that related to schools. Around this time a lot of schools in the united states had started to include an optional non denominational daily school wide prayer at the beginning of school. This was during the cold war and the increase of shown spiritualism was in response to communist Russia who had “eliminated” religion. Some of the schools that had the daily prayer was the New York public schools. One of the parents, Stephen Engel sued on behalf of his child, arguing that the law violated the Establishment clause, prohibits the government from making any law that establishes a national religion, of their First Amendment right. Not allowing the students to practice religion the way they want to, he himself being Jewish. This case was the one of many that established a barrier between state and religion. This court case was brought to the Supreme Court in 1962 and the Chief justice at the time was Chief Justice Warren who was involved in a lot of progressive cases during his time, including Brown v. Board of Education and Gideon v. Wainwright. Engel v. Vitale was a very controversial case during this time. The people for Engel, believed that having prayer in schools is in violation to the students rights on how they choose practice their …show more content…
A school wide prayer is still against the law as unconstitutional. Also this case was very important because the public is very split about this topic even today. Still being one of the most disliked court decisions. Engel v. Vitale “eliminated” religion from schools making a school wide prayer illegal. This was the first in a series of cases in which the Court used the establishment clause to separate religious activities and government of all sorts, for example Lemon v. Kurtzman. This court case was a step toward better religious freedom for

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