The Freedom From Religion Foundation is delighted to have ended the just-departed year with an intervention that stopped a school board prayer in the Golden State.
A concerned parent in the Hart-Ransom Union School District (headquartered in Modesto, Calif.) informed the state–church watchdog that the school board began each meeting with a prayer led by one of its members. Additionally, the board’s official agendas listed an “invocation” at the beginning of meetings. The board asked attendees to participate in the prayer, which was specifically and uniformly Christian. The board’s opening prayer at a recent meeting made the FFRF complainant “extremely uncomfortable.”
FFRF requested that the board cease opening its meetings with prayer out of respect for the First Amendment and the community’s diversity.
“The Supreme Court has consistently struck down prayers offered at school-sponsored events,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to Hart-Ransom USD Board of Trustees President Shawn Brunk. “In each of these cases, the Supreme Court struck down school-sponsored prayer because it’s unconstitutionally coercive and constitutes government favoritism toward religion, which violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”
Students and parents, such as our complainant, have the right — and often reason — to participate in school board meetings, FFRF emphasized. It is coercive, insensitive and intimidating to force nonreligious and minority faith citizens to choose between making a public showing of being non-Christian by refusing to participate in the prayer or else displaying deference toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe but which their school board members clearly do. The board’s actions were marginalizing the community members who belong to the 37 percent of the American population that is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent that is nonreligious.
FFRF asked that the Hart-Ransom USD Board of Trustees refrain from opening its meetings with prayer going forward to protect the rights of students, their parents, and the local community.
Hart-Ransom USD heeded FFRF’s constitutional call.
“We have consulted with legal counsel regarding your concern,” Hart-Ransom USD Superintendent Matthew Shipley responded last month. “Future Board meetings will no longer be opened with prayer.”
FFRF is happy to have been of service at the end of the year.
“We’re always glad to provide a constitutional tutorial — at the beginning of the year, at the end or any time in between,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
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.
Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash
