Timothy L. Hall

One of the two decisions known as the school prayer cases, Abington followed immediately in the wake of Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), in which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the recitation in public schools of a prayer composed by the New York Board of Regents.

In the mid-1980s, the Supreme Court first considered the constitutionality of religious holiday displays in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), involving a city’s display of a nativity scene among other symbols of the Christmas holiday.