Keller school board cautioned about prayers during meetings

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is monitoring the Keller school board meetings after board members in July began to invite clergy to pray. Sammi Lawrence, an attorney with the Freedom From religion Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin, said there are concerns that the school board is excluding other faiths such as Islam and Judaism. “We got numerous complaints from community members about it,” Lawrence said. “Members were offended by the prayers, feeling that it was inappropriate for the school board to insert prayers into the meetings. They were alienated.” Lawrence sent a letter to the school district on July 29 that stated the Freedom From Religion Foundation believes that the school board is likely violating the Constitution by allowing a Christian prayer.

“By selecting a Christian religious leader who gave an explicitly Christian prayer, the Board’s current practice likely violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government promotion and favoritism of one religion over another religion, in this case, Christianity, or religion generally over nonreligion,” Lawrence wrote. Lawrence added that the practice appears to violate the board’s policy against affirmatively sponsoring the particular religious practice of prayer. The letter also stated no board member should seek to impose his or her personal religious preferences on those at meetings. The school board’s practice of offering a prayer at the meetings “needlessly” exposes the Keller school district to legal liability and ostracizes residents of different faiths or those who don’t practice a religion, Lawrence said. But Timothy Davis, an attorney with the school board law firm Cantey Hanger, wrote in an Aug. 15 letter to the Freedom From Religion Foundation that the school district is not violating the Constitution by allowing prayers at meetings because it is protected by the legislative prayer exception.