Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has persuaded a North Dakota school district to end its longstanding, unconstitutional practice of including clergy-led prayer during high school graduation ceremonies.
A concerned student informed the state/church watchdog that the Lidgerwood Public School district had a years-long tradition of beginning high school graduation ceremonies with a Christian prayer delivered by a clergyperson. The student has personally witnessed this school-sponsored graduation prayer at the past four graduations, and their understanding is that the district’s graduation prayer practice had been going on far longer. A program from the most recent graduation ceremony indicates that an invocation was indeed delivered at the May 17 event.
The student, who belongs to a minority religion, told FFRF that the Christian prayer made them uncomfortable and pressured students to participate. “No one wants to be the only person not standing with their head bowed,” the student explained. The student was particularly concerned about facing the same religious exercise at their own future graduation, telling FFRF that they might skip the ceremony entirely rather than endure the discomfort of a school-sponsored prayer.
FFRF took action, urging the district to comply with court precedent to ensure that future high school graduation ceremonies do not include school-sponsored prayer, which have been ruled unconstitutional.
“School officials may not invite a clergymember, student, community member, teacher, administrator, or anyone else to give any type of prayer, invocation, benediction, or sermon at a public high school-sponsored event,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to the superintendent.
High school graduation is a once-in-a-lifetime event that students spend over a decade working toward. As our student-complainant explained, the school’s shoehorning prayer into graduation made them so anxious about their graduation that they considered not attending it in order to avoid having their constitutional rights violated by their school. Including prayers at graduation puts many students and families in the difficult position of choosing between exiting or foregoing the ceremony or violating their conscience. The First Amendment forbids public schools from coercing students to make this choice. And making prayer part of graduation ceremonies and other school-sponsored events needlessly marginalizes students and families who are nonreligious or members of minority faiths, such as our complainant. Thirty-eight percent of the American population is non-Christian, including nearly 30 percent who are nonreligious. More than half of Generation Z (those born after 1996) is non-Christian, including a whopping 43 percent who have no religious affiliation.
FFRF is pleased to report that the district took appropriate corrective action. In a letter to FFRF, Ian R. McLean, the district’s legal representative, wrote: “The district will not sponsor or organize a clergy delivered prayer as part of future graduation programs. The district will continue to treat private religious and nonreligious expression neutrally and in accordance with applicable First Amendment law.”
FFRF welcomes the district’s commitment to ensuring future graduations are inclusive of every student — regardless of their religious or nonreligious beliefs.
“No student should have to choose between participating in a religious exercise that violates their conscience and feeling like an outsider at their own graduation,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We’re especially grateful to the courageous student who spoke up. Because they did, future Lidgerwood graduates will be able to celebrate this important milestone without a school-sponsored religious exercise.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 40,000 members across the country, including members in North Dakota, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
