The US Supreme Court today refused to hear an appeal from Duval County, Florida, challenging the school district's policy of allowing students to elect their own "chaplains" to deliver messages at graduation. The speakers are student-elected and the school board does not censor or review the contents of the speech.

Why would anyone oppose this? Because the policy was put in place in 1993 after the Supreme Court ruled that public schools may not include prayer in graduation ceremonies. Presbyterian as I am, that's the right ruling: telling kids they have to sit through a prayer they may not believe just to participate in the crowning achievement of their educational life is just wrong. (Fundamentalist types who don't see the point in this should imagine their kids having to get on their knees and bow towards Mecca in a graduation ceremony and maybe they'll get the clue -- just because you and all your friends believe something doesn't mean everyone does, and your school rights shouldn't be conditional on your participation in rituals of someone else's faith.)

In fact, according to Americans United, this exact policy led students in 1998 to elect an evangelical Christian speaker, who used her captive audience to preach.

In her remarks during the graduation, she thanked Jesus for "dying for our sins" and thanked God for "raising him from the dead three days later so that through your son's death we may be at peace with you and thereby may have fellowship with you.

AU is disappointed at today's ruling. Me, I'm a staunch separation advocate, and I'm not so sure. Rejecting this policy is awfully close to saying "you can say anything you want as long as it's not religious," which is also clearly a violation of the principle of separation of church and state. The government should neither encourage nor discourage religious matters; "separation" means "staying out of it." (That's why nativity scenes on public property are bad; the last thing a Jewish parent needs is her 4-year-old son asking, "Why do the police believe in Jesus but we don't? Aren't we supposed to do what the police say?")

On the other hand, if the policy was created to get around separation of church and state, and if it's all a wink-wink-nudge-nudge understanding that the kids are supposed to elect religious speakers or else they're not "showing their faith," then the program is a bad faith effort to make sure mandatory ceremonies like graduation spread a religious message to a captive audience. It would be like ending a policy of racial discrimination in a company but replacing it with one that requires all job applicants to graduate from a 98% white school.

It makes me glad I'm not a judge.