FFRF has taken action to ensure that students in Breitung Township Schools in Kingsford, Mich., will no longer be socially pressured into participating in religious rituals.
This past spring, the district’s Eighth-Grade Dinner Dance included a prayer that students were instructed to recite before a meal. The prayer had been organized by Mrs. Hofer, a teacher in the district, who had pressured and shamed students at the event to join in the religious ritual by saying that refusing to do so would be poor manners. FFRF Legal Director Rebecca Markert wrote to Superintendent Craig Allen on May 25, warning that it is a constitutional violation for public school teachers to involve themselves in prayer.
Allen responded on July 28 that the incident had been discussed with the violator.