Abington School District v. Schempp
1963 U.S. Supreme Court case ending required prayer and Bible reading in public schools
Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided 8–1 in favor of the respondent, Edward Schempp, on behalf of his son Ellery Schempp, and declared that school-sponsored Bible reading and the recitation of the Lord's Prayer in public schools in the United States was unconstitutional.
Background
Public schools in Pennsylvania had been required to start the school day by reading Bible verses since 1949. By the 1960s, four more states had passed similar laws requiring daily Bible reading. Twenty-five states had laws allowing "optional" Bible reading, with the remainder of the states having no laws supporting or rejecting Bible reading. In eleven of those states with laws supportive of Bible reading or state-sponsored prayer, state courts had declared the laws to be unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court had already applied the Establishment Clause to the states in Everson v. Board of Education (1947) by a process called incorporation.
Edward Schempp, a Unitarian Universalist, sued the Abington School District in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania challenging the Pennsylvania law under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Lower court history
During the first trial in federal district court, Schempp and his children testified as to specific religious doctrines "which were contrary to the religious beliefs which they held and to their familial teaching".
“Abington School District v. Schempp” enters the record as 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case ending required prayer and Bible reading in public schools. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Abington, School and District can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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