604
Blackmun, J., concurring
sures students to attend and participate in the prayer, there can be no doubt that the government is advancing and promoting religion.5 As our prior decisions teach us, it is this that the Constitution prohibits.
II
I join the Court's opinion today because I find nothing in it inconsistent with the essential precepts of the Establishment Clause developed in our precedents. The Court holds that the graduation prayer is unconstitutional because the State "in effect required participation in a religious exercise." Ante, at 594. Although our precedents make clear that proof of government coercion is not necessary to prove an Establishment Clause violation, it is sufficient. Government pressure to participate in a religious activity is an obvious indication that the government is endorsing or promoting religion.
But it is not enough that the government restrain from compelling religious practices: It must not engage in them either. See Schempp, 374 U. S., at 305 (Goldberg, J., concurring). The Court repeatedly has recognized that a violation of the Establishment Clause is not predicated on coercion. See, e. g., id., at 223; id., at 229 (Douglas, J., concurring); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 72 (1985) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment) ("The decisions [in Engel and Schempp] acknowledged the coercion implicit under the statutory schemes, but they expressly turned only on the fact that the government was sponsoring a manifestly religious exercise" (citation omitted)); Committee for Public Ed. & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756, 786 (1973) ("[P]roof of coercion . . . [is] not a necessary element of any claim under the Establishment Clause"). The Establishment Clause proscribes public schools from "conveying or attempting to con-5 In this case, the religious message it promotes is specifically Judeo-Christian. The phrase in the benediction: "We must each strive to fulfill what you require of us all, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly" obviously was taken from the Book of the Prophet Micah, ch. 6, v. 8.
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