Jack Kingston: “Mr. Speaker, I want to get back to something the previous speaker said about the Supreme Court's making a statement that…”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to get back to something the previous speaker said about the Supreme Court's making a statement that they never came out against school prayer. That was not the case at all. If we look at the Engel v. Vitale case in 1962, a pertinent portion of this debate was when Engel stated, and I quote, ``Neither the fact that the prayer may be denominationally neutral nor the fact that its observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the establishment clause, as it might be from the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, both of which are operative against the State by virtue of the 14th Amendment.'' So clearly there is a case where the Supreme Court has said that even voluntary prayer is a problem in terms of their interpretation of the Constitution. Because of that, because of their extreme approach on this, I do support this rule and the Istook amendment.”