The Freedom From Religion Foundation has ensured that the Glendora Unified School District school board meetings are free of prayer.
Several concerned district community members reported that the board’s Dec. 9 meeting began with a Christian prayer delivered by Mayor Mendell Thompson. The board did not appear to have an official policy permitting or governing prayers at meetings. Additionally, the opening prayer was not listed on the meeting’s official agenda or as part of the public comment portion of the meeting. One of FFRF’s complainants reported that “as someone who does not believe in God, it was very uncomfortable” to be forced to participate in and observe a prayer at a public school board meeting.
“If the board opens future meetings with prayer it will subject the district to unnecessary liability and potential financial strain,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to the district last month. Under the First Amendment separating religion from government, public school boards should not open their meetings with prayer.
Students, parents and community members, such as our complainants, have the right — and often reason — to participate in school board meetings, FFRF contended. It is coercive, insensitive and intimidating to force nonreligious and minority faith meeting attendees to choose between making a public showing of being non-Christian by refusing to participate in the prayer or else display deference toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe, but which their school board members clearly do.
Board members are free to pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way. However, the board ought not to lend its power and prestige to religion or coerce attendees into participating in a religious exercise. The board’s actions marginalized the community members who belong to the 37 percent of the American population that is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent who are nonreligious. At least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) has no religion, with a recent survey revealing that almost half of Gen Z qualifies as religiously unaffiliated “Nones.”
Board President Gary Clifford did not initially agree:
“I read the letter. Of consequence is the fact that we did not start the meeting with prayer. Being reverent to the law, and the board, I did seek legal advice. The meeting was not officially started until after the prayer. You can note that the prayer was done outside the parameters of the agendized [sic] meeting.”
FFRF, however, did not give up. Lawrence once again wrote to the district, “Beginning public school board meetings with prayer violates the First Amendment, even if the prayer technically occurs right before the official meeting is brought to order.”
FFRF received complaints from at least 10 Glendora school district community members regarding the prayer. The board’s constituents were not asking for, nor did they desire, for the board to violate the First Amendment by opening meetings with prayer, and FFRF reiterated that the board would only be sending an exclusionary message to the community and marginalizing many attendees.
FFRF’s dedication prevailed in the end. The district’s attorney emailed back recently, writing: “Please be advised the district has no plans to hold prayer at its meetings.”
FFRF is pleased to see its hard work pay off — even if it took a few attempts to get it right.
“The community made it clear that it didn’t want to be proselytized to,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor states. “The First Amendment doesn’t care when a prayer happens. If it’s delivered in front of the school board, it is a violation of our secular Constitution.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 5,000 members and two chapters in California. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
