The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling out a blatantly unconstitutional bill just introduced in the Alabama Legislature to force public school students to pray at the start of every day. The state/church watchdog calls it the latest in a wave of legislation testing the boundaries of state/church separation in public schools across the country.
House Bill 231 would amend the state Constitution to require all public K-12 schools to start the day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer “consistent with Judeo-Christian values.” Schools that don’t comply could face devastating financial penalties, with the Alabama superintendent of education empowered to slash 25 percent of their state funding. If schools continue to resist, the Legislature could implement even deeper cuts, effectively coercing schools into foisting religious exercises on students.
“This bill is an outrageous attempt to impose religion on captive public school students even as young as 5,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Public schools exist to educate, not to evangelize. Religious instruction should be left to the home, where it belongs.”
The bill would create a hostile environment for students of minority faiths and nonreligious students while punishing schools that respect constitutional rights of conscience. HB 231’s financial penalties could compel school districts to choose between upholding student rights and keeping their doors open. Alabama lawmakers should be focused on funding education — not wasting taxpayer money on an unconstitutional amendment.
This bill isn’t about religious freedom; it’s about the government forcing religion onto students. The Constitution protects students from precisely this kind of state-imposed worship. The Alabama bill disregards Engel v. Vitale (1962), a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down government-mandated school prayer as unconstitutional, and more than 75 years of clear Supreme Court precedent that firmly prohibit public schools from leading or hosting official religious practices.
The Supreme Court in Engel emphasized that students may not be pressured into religious activities by the state and that the state may not host a daily prayer forcing students to participate, even passively, in a religious observance they may not agree with. This case was followed by the Abington v. Schempp decision of 1963 against bible-reading and recitation in the public schools, the Weisman decision of 1992 against prayer at graduation ceremonies and the Sante Fe v. Doe decision of 2000 against so-called student-led prayer at public school events. Unlike in Engel, where the prayer was written to be broadly religious, the proposed Alabama amendment explicitly favors Christianity, making the violation even more egregious.
FFRF points out that today Christians make up less than two-thirds of Americans, compared to the early 1990s when they were about 90 percent of U.S. adults. The fastest-growing segment of the population by religious identification has been the nonreligious, currently at nearly three-in-10 adults. In Alabama, at least 18 percent of the population identifies as religiously unaffiliated. The proposed law would marginalize and exclude the great numbers of Alabama families who reject religion or belong to minority faiths.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation urges Alabama’s legislators to reject this unconstitutional bill and stand up for true religious freedom. If it is enacted, FFRF intends to challenge HB 231 in court to ensure that public schools remain inclusive, secular spaces for all students. FFRF is a national state/church watchdog that has brought more than 100 lawsuits.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with nearly 42,000 members nationwide, including hundreds of members in Alabama. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
