Cite as: 505 U. S. 577 (1992)
Scalia, J., dissenting
lent of the legal sanctions in Barnette is . . . well, let me just say it is not a "delicate and fact-sensitive" analysis.
The Court relies on our "school prayer" cases, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S. 421 (1962), and School Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203 (1963). Ante, at 592. But whatever the merit of those cases, they do not support, much less compel, the Court's psycho-journey. In the first place, Engel and Schempp do not constitute an exception to the rule, distilled from historical practice, that public ceremonies may include prayer, see supra, at 633-636; rather, they simply do not fall within the scope of the rule (for the obvious reason that school instruction is not a public ceremony). Second, we have made clear our understanding that school prayer occurs within a framework in which legal coercion to attend school (i. e., coercion under threat of penalty) provides the ultimate backdrop. In Schempp, for example, we emphasized that the prayers were "prescribed as part of the curricular activities of students who are required by law to attend school." 374 U. S., at 223 (emphasis added). Engel's suggestion that the school prayer program at issue there—which permitted students "to remain silent or be excused from the room," 370 U. S., at 430—involved "indirect coercive pressure," id., at 431, should be understood against this backdrop of legal coercion. The question whether the opt-out procedure in Engel sufficed to dispel the coercion resulting from the mandatory attendance requirement is quite different from the question whether forbidden coercion exists in an environment utterly devoid of legal compulsion. And finally, our school prayer cases turn in part on the fact that the classroom is inherently an instructional setting, and daily prayer there—where parents are not present to counter "the students' emulation of teachers as role models and the children's susceptibility to peer pressure," Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U. S. 578, 584 (1987)—might be thought to raise special concerns regarding state interference with the liberty of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children: "Families entrust pub-
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