'Prayer judge' has stick-to-the-law record
By John Peck
Times State Capital CorrespondentMONTGOMERY — Lifelong Republican. Decorated military man. Former counsel to preacher-turned-governor Guy Hunt.
These aren't necessarily the credentials some would expect of the judge who struck down a 1993 state school prayer law and who has caused an uproar with his recent detailed order of what school officials and students can or can't do when it comes to religious activities.
Friends and acquaintances of U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent say he is intelligent, thorough and follows the U.S. Constitution to the letter — no matter what the issue.
DeMent, who declined interview requests last week, was appointed to the bench by President Bush in 1992.
His resume describes a man who has risen through the ranks from private attorney to assistant city attorney to U.S. attorney to federal judge.
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A native of Birmingham, DeMent graduated from high school there and spent the next two years at Marion Military Institute, where he earned an associate of science degree.
He got his law degree from the University of Alabama in 1953 and his doctor of jurisprudence degree from UA in 1958.
DeMent served in the Army from 1953-1974, was honorably discharged as a lieutenant colonel, then was directly commissioned into the Air Force Reserves, where he achieved the rank of major general.
DeMent was assistant U.S. attorney in Montgomery from 1959 to 1961, went into private practice for several years, then served as assistant city attorney in Montgomery from 1965 to 1969. President Nixon tapped him U.S. attorney in 1969, a post he held until 1977.
As U.S. attorney, he was involved in landmark cases on state prison conditions, youth corrections facilities, racial integration of Alabama state troopers and conditions in state mental facilities.
A lifelong Republican, DeMent maintained contacts that helped land him the federal judgeship when then-judge Truman Hobbs took semi-retirement.
Montgomery Mayor Emory Folmar, Hunt, U.S. Reps. Sonny Callahan, R-Mobile, and Bill Dickinson, R-Montgomery, and Bush's Alabama campaign manager, John Grenier, served on a patronage committee that pushed DeMent's name for consideration....
The Huntsville Times, Sunday November 9, 1997
Editorial
Prayer protest ~ Best Approach: Read court order
Michael Chandler is a brave man. The assistant principal at Valley Head School filed the lawsuit that resulted in U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent's ruling on Oct. 30 that set guidelines for religious practices in public schools.
Judge DeMent went into detail with his do's and don'ts, but the basic principal seems to be what the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have been saying for years: that public-school authorities must not sponsor religious activities. In other words, students should not be put in a position where they feel their teachers and principals are encouraging them to pray or read the Bible. Judge DeMent's order does not prohibit students from initiating religious expressions or engaging in them privately as long as they don't impose their religion on others.
Some Alabamian's reactions could lead you to believe that Judge DeMent had launched an attack on religion. Students in Albertville and Gadsden skipped class in protest, and consequently were suspended from school. All the usual protesters — Gov. Fob James, Attorney General Bill Pryor and Etowah County Circuit Judge Roy Moore (the one with the Ten Commandments in his courtroom) — howled predictably.
Judge Moore formally declared the federal court order unconstitutional and said it cannot be enforced in his county — reminiscent of then-Circuit Judge George Wallace's defiance of federal judge Frank Johnson over voter-registration records four decades ago, when Wallace's holy cause was keeping blacks from voting.
And in Valley Head, some students and adults are showing their alleged Christianity by giving plaintiff Chandler the cold shoulder. "I have been demonized," he told an interviewer. It's lonely being right.
To his credit, Gov. James saw that some things were getting out of hand. On Friday he urged students to end walkouts and said prayer should not be used for protest. James said he would "continue to pursue the case by every legal and political means possible," which is the right way to handle it if he disagrees with the order. Decatur-area school superintendents are taking a reasonable stance, saying they'll obey the law.
The most beneficial approach for schoolchildren would be to read Judge DeMent's actual order, rather than accepting what others are saying about it. They might learn that it's not as bad as they've heard and that it makes sense.
The Decatur Daily, Sunday November 9, 1997
Alabama Opinion
Misleading our childrenNeither Judge DeMent nor any other judge or court has taken away the right of individuals to pray in public schools.
Protest demonstrators are an American tradition. You don't like something, you get a bunch of like-minded individuals together and stage a demonstration.
Some protests accomplish their goals. Others do not. Depending on the circumstances surrounding a demonstration, the participants may face sanctions or legal penalties — even if history eventually proves they were on the right side of the issue that prompted their actions.
But if you're going to protest something, you really ought to get your facts straight.
Unfortunately, that hasn't happened with the students in northeastern Alabama who have been protesting U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent's recent ruling concerning religious practices and public school.
Mislead by adults who persist in distorting what the courts have said on this issue — two prime offenders being Gov. Fob James and Etowah County Circuit Judge Roy Moore — the students have demanded the restoration of rights that haven't been taken away from them.
Neither Judge DeMent nor any other judge or court has taken away the right of individual students to pray in public schools. Nor have they taken away the right to form extracurricular religious organizations under the same rules that apply to all other extracurricular activities. Even nondisruptive gatherings of students for religious purposes — for example, praying at the flagpole -- not only remain legal, but are protected by the First Amendment.
It is when teachers and other school officials become involved in organizing prayer or other religious activities in public schools that the line is crossed. Such activities violate the First Amendment rights of students.
The students who have been demonstrating should look beyond the governor's rhetoric and Moore's borrowing of the long-discredited tactic of segregationist state judges who issued injunctions in the 1950s and 1960s against federal court orders. If they study his order and some American history, the students would find that Judge DeMent's ruling actually protects their rights.
The Huntsville Times, Monday November 10, 1997
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