Given an opportunity by the Texas Legislature to set aside time each day for students and staff to pray, most school districts appear to have declined the offer.

required Texas school boards to decide by March 1 whether to provide a daily devotional period, which students could attend during noninstructional hours to pray and read the Bible or other religious text, likely before school.

But one of the key lawmakers who guided the bill through the Legislature has identified only 15 school districts that have opted into the prayer period. Many other urban, suburban and rural districts voted against it.

“I respect their opinion. They know their communities,” said Rep. , R-Jacksboro. “That’s not to say that they can’t come back and revisit it. But this is not a mandate. I’ve said very clearly from the start, this is not a mandate bill. The only thing that’s mandated is if they consider it. They don’t have to adopt it.”

SB 11 is part of a slate of bills approved in recent legislative sessions that aim to promote a conservative brand of Christianity in public education and test the legal limits of church-state separation.

The Texas Legislature has passed laws requiring schools to in classrooms, allowing unlicensed chaplains to offer to students and setting the foundation for an optional filled with references to Christianity.

SB 11 requires school districts that establish the prayer period to obtain signed consent forms from interested families, which waive parents’ right to sue the district for alleged violations of state or federal law and acknowledge that students have a choice to attend the religious gathering.

The law prohibits schools from reading religious texts over a public address system, and school leaders must ensure the prayer period does not take place in the physical presence or within earshot of students who lack parental consent.

More than 160 Texas faith leaders , noting the administrative burden, students’ existing rights to practice their religion and the potential harm to children who decide not to participate. Civil rights advocates also argued the law .

Texas Attorney General suggested otherwise, not only encouraging students to take advantage of prayer time but also suggesting they engage with

But many of Texas’ roughly 1,200 districts and charters, including those in politically conservative communities, declined.

They questioned how schools would manage the parental consent requirements. Some opposed what they saw as state leaders promoting a conservative vision of Christianity. Others pointed to federal, state and school policies that already allow students to organize religious clubs and prayer periods.

“In reality, there was no need for it,” said Alex Kotara, vice president of the Karnes City school district board, which is located in a conservative town southeast of San Antonio.

“It passes the buck to local school districts to make that decision, but it also does it in a way that requires them to also opt out — not just opt in — which then, from an elected official standpoint, puts you in a position where, when they boil down a convoluted, kind of contradictory bill to a sound bite, it’s going to be that we did not allow prayer in school,” Kotara said.

Spiller, the bill sponsor, acknowledged that federal and state laws already protect students’ ability to practice their religion at school. But he believes SB 11 builds on existing protections by requiring participating schools to allow time for prayer each day.

“It’s not a gotcha bill,” Spiller said. “But I think if boards just vote this down without forethought, consideration and seeking the will of their public, do I think that they will hear from it? Yes, I do. I think their constituents will let them know that they don’t appreciate them, in many instances, blocking a right that they have when it costs the school nothing.”

The Aledo school district in North Texas opted in, but board members didn’t necessarily vote in favor of the period because they felt it expanded students’ rights, said school board President Forrest Collins.

“Basically, the state Legislature forced us to vote on something schools already support, and our vote was really just to reaffirm the constitutional rights of students,” Collins said. “I felt like, personally, the bill was kind of a waste of time.”

This first appeared on .

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new office within the Oklahoma State Department of Education will promote expressions of religion and patriotism in public schools.

The head of the agency, state Superintendent Ryan Walters, announced Tuesday he established the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism. He said the new division will align with incoming President Donald Trump’s aim of protecting prayer in schools.

The office will investigate alleged abuses against religious freedom and patriotic displays, according to a news release from the Education Department.

Walters cited a September 2023 incident in which a from a classroom at the urging of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which contended it was unconstitutional for a public school to allow religious displays. At the time, Walters said the removal was “unacceptable.”

The that students and public school employees are permitted to pray on school grounds, but school employees cannot lead students in prayer or other religious activities while doing their jobs. The Court in public schools, finding it a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of government-established religion.

Walters said public schools have been “ground zero” for erosion of religious liberty. While calling church-state separation a “myth,” he , sought to and advocated for opening a in the state.

“It is no coincidence that the dismantling of faith and family values in public schools directly correlates with declining academic outcomes in our public schools,” Walters said in a statement Tuesday. “In Oklahoma, we are reversing this negative trend and, working with the incoming Trump Administration, we are going to aggressively pursue education policies that will improve academic outcomes and give our children a better future.”

A group of 32 parents, students, teachers and faith leaders from Oklahoma to block Walters’ Bible education mandate and to stop the use of state funds to buy Bibles. The plaintiffs are represented by multiple national legal groups, including the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

“Superintendent Ryan Walters cannot be allowed to employ the machinery of the state to indoctrinate Oklahoma’s students in his religion,” foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said last month. “Thankfully, Oklahoma law protects families and taxpayers from his unconstitutional scheme to force public schools to adopt his preferred holy book.”

Since the Nov. 5 election, Walters has been paving the way in the state Education Department for major policy changes from the next Trump administration, including the potential closure of the U.S. Department of Education. Trump has proposed eliminating the federal agency and sending education funds in block grants to states.

Among other policy goals, Trump has advocated for more patriotic education and giving parents a greater role in the public school system, including in the hiring and firing of principals.

Walters said Monday he is convening an advisory committee of Oklahoma education leaders and policymakers to implement the Trump education agenda.

The state superintendent similarly has supported pro-America education and patriotic displays. He invited right-wing policy advocates and conservative media personalities, most of whom live out of state, to help .

In August, Walters issued guidelines instructing all districts to develop a policy for displaying the U.S. flag. He did so while criticizing Edmond Public Schools, which had asked a high school student to remove an American flag from his truck.

The Edmond district did so because it had an existing policy prohibiting students from bringing flags of any kind to school. The district displays the American flag in front of every school and in each classroom, it said in a statement.

Walters quickly took aim at Edmond, saying “no Oklahoma school should tell students they can’t wave the American flag.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Q: Can a school ban a child from praying, or do schools have to provide accommodations for children with certain beliefs? – Isaac T., 17, Flint, Michigan

The conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday appeared to be leaning in favor of a Bremerton, Washington, football coach who prayed on the field after games, despite his school district’s instructions to stop. 

The case, , centers on whether the coach’s prayer amounted to government speech and, therefore, whether it violated the Constitution’s separation of church and state. Joseph Kennedy, the coach, argues he was unfairly put on leave for his actions.

In arguments Monday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the coach’s prayer was “not audible to all players.”

“They’re not all there,” he said. “They don’t have to be there. It’s not a team event.”

The case is the second focusing on schools and religion the court has heard this term, with a conservative supermajority on the bench leaning toward fewer restrictions on religious liberty. In December, the justices heard oral arguments in a over public funding for private religious schools.

Joshua Dunn, a political science professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs,  said that he doesn’t expect five justices to lean the district’s way, especially since this was a case that four of the conservative justices signaled they wanted to hear when Kennedy first petitioned the court in 2019.

John Taylor, a law professor at West Virginia University, added that it’s not just the most conservative justices on the court — Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — who see their role as “protecting conservative Christians from what they regard as oppression by the liberal, secular order.” But Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett “also sound the same themes on occasion.”

In Monday’s hearing, the justices posed a variety of hypothetical scenarios to both attorneys to get at the extent of a school employee’s religious freedoms under the First Amendment and what to do when exercising those rights infringe on student freedoms. Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked if an employee could make the sign of the cross, for example, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked if the district could fire someone who wore a Nazi swastika on their arm if they said it was part of their religion. 

Richard Katskee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, representing the district, called Kennedy’s prayers a form of coercion, adding that students worried they would lose playing time if they didn’t participate and that the coach even “announced in the press that those prayers are how he helps these kids be better people.”

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three liberals on the court, said the district had a right to discipline the coach because even if he didn’t directly threaten to sideline players who didn’t participate, the activity puts “undue pressure” on students who have different beliefs or have no religion. 

“We’re worried that the students will feel, ‘He gets to put me into a football game or not. He gets to …give me an A in math class or not,’ ” Kagan said. “This is a kind of coercion that’s improper for 16-year-olds.”

The main question in this case, Taylor said, is whether the court will try to characterize the coach’s actions as completely private or “take a broader swing at Supreme Court precedents.”

Paul Clement, attorney for First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm representing Kennedy, argued before the court that the district would have a hard time making a case for coercion because it disciplined him for two games in which students didn’t participate in prayers. 

He added that the district’s argument focused on whether officials might appear to be endorsing the prayers because they occurred at a school football game. But he likened the coach’s prayers to those of soccer player Mohamed Salah and football player Tim Tebow.

“Right after Tim Tebow scores the touchdown, he’s absolutely the center of attention, yet he engages in a religious exercise,” Clement said. “It’s private, it’s permissible and the government can’t stop it.” 

The justices made several references to the so-called Lemon test, which stems from Lemon v. Kurtzman, a 1971 case on church-state separation. The court in that case held that allowing religious expression is a form of endorsement, or establishment. But some of the justices noted that the standard is no longer relevant. 

“I don’t think that is a test anymore,” Justice Alito said. “We haven’t applied that in two decades, and so I don’t think that helps … on the school cases.”

Note: An earlier version of this story, including the headline, incorrectly stated that Joseph Kennedy was fired by his school district for praying after football games.

The district said students felt pressured to join Kennedy’s moments of prayer. They argued that because the coach was on the job, officials would have appeared to be endorsing the activity, putting them at risk of violating the First Amendment’s separation between church and state.

The decision to hear puts yet another case on schools and religion before the court’s conservative supermajority. The court has already heard oral arguments this term in a Maine lawsuit over public funding for private religious schools. At stake in Kennedy is the extent to which public school employees can practice their religion at work. Attorneys for the district said officials were protecting students’ religious freedom by ending what one called a “pray to play” arrangement. But Kennedy’s legal team warns that a decision in favor of the school district could make any expression of religion at school, such as wearing a yarmulke or bowing one’s head in the lunchroom, grounds for dismissal. 

“There is clarity that the court really needs to provide here,” said Jeremy Dys, an attorney with First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm representing Kennedy. “There’s always tension between the administrators trying to stamp out religion, and coaches and teachers who want to engage in their religious beliefs.”

This is the second time Kennedy’s case has reached the high court. The court opted not to hear it in 2019 because the facts regarding Kennedy’s dismissal were unclear. But even then, four justices — Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — signaled that they would be open to hearing it in the future, saying the lower court’s “understanding of the free speech rights of public school teachers is troubling.”

That invitation could bode well for Kennedy this time around, said Joshua Dunn, a political science professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. 

“My initial reaction is that the court is going to side with Kennedy since some of the justices already laid out the legal roadmap for him a couple years ago,” he said. 

in 2019 that should Kennedy get another shot, the case could lead to a decision that “moderately” expands educators free speech rights or to a “truly landmark” ruling regarding how far governments have to go to accommodate employees’ religious practices.

Since then, a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, has joined the court, leading some public school supporters to agree that the justices will lean Kennedy’s way.

“I think, given the makeup of the court and their decisions thus far on religious freedom, that the district will not be successful,” said Sasha Pudleski, advocacy director at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. “But I hope I’m wrong.”

In 2020, the court ruled in , that excluding a religious school from a tax credit scholarship program simply because it was religious was unconstitutional. Last year, the court ruled unanimously that a Catholic social services agency, had a right to exclude same-sex couples from becoming foster parents. And while the court has not yet ruled in the Maine religious school choice case, conservative justices appeared ready to side with the plaintiffs during oral arguments in December.

‘Impressionable students’

The Kennedy case gives the court another chance to weigh in the issue of religious freedom. But the Bremerton district argues that students’ religious freedoms were compromised, not Kennedy’s. 

“No student should ever be made to feel excluded — whether it’s in the classroom or on the football field — because they don’t share the religious beliefs of their coaches, teachers or fellow students,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which represents the district, said in a statement. “This case is about protecting impressionable students who felt pressured by their coach to participate repeatedly in public prayer.”

The district offered to give Kennedy a private space on campus to express his Christian beliefs, which included giving thanks after games. But Kennedy turned them down and publicized the fact that he was going to continue his prayers.

For that reason, the district argued that the coach “was not engaging in private prayer, but was instead engaging in public speech of an overtly religious nature,” according to the lawsuit.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in favor of the district, looked to a 2006 Supreme Court decision, in making its decision. In that case, the court said governments can discipline public employees for what they say while they are performing their jobs. 

Laser, with Americans United, urged the Supreme Court not to “fall for” the argument that Kennedy was praying silently. 

But First Liberty Institute, in its appeal to the court, argued there’s a difference between government speech and private speech, and that Kennedy was still engaging in personal prayers. To suggest that everything Kennedy did while at work was government speech, they wrote, is an “overbroad job description” that other courts have rejected.Republican attorneys general from 24 states agreed. In , they predicted “grave effects on public employees and employers alike, especially within the realm of public education” if the lower court ruling stands.