He invited a rabbi to deliver a prayer at the 1989 graduation ceremony, but the day before the ceremony, the parents of student Deborah Weisman filed a motion in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island for a temporary restraining order to bar the rabbi from delivering the invocation, arguing that it would violate the Establishment Clause.

Chief Judge Francis J. Boyle denied the Weismans' motion, "essentially because the Court was not afforded adequate time to consider the important issues of the case".

Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, which maintained previous Supreme Court precedents sharply limiting the place of religion within the nation's public schools—far from joining those who favored curtailing restrictions on school prayers.

The Blackmun papers reveal that Kennedy switched his vote during the deliberations, as he also did in Planned Parenthood v. Casey,[13] saying that his draft majority opinion upholding the prayer exercise "looked quite wrong.

Justice Souter devoted his concurring opinion to a historical analysis, rebutting the contention that the government could endorse nonsectarian prayers.

Souter, too, took issue with the school district's defense of non-coercive religious exercises, dismissing the position as without precedential authority.

He disputed the Court's contention that attendance at high school graduation ceremonies was effectively required as part of social norms, and also the conclusion that students were subtly coerced to stand for the rabbi's invocation.