Lenoir City Superintendent Wayne Miller outlined the district's policy at a school board meeting Thursday.
Miller said that although he and the school board members are people of faith, they are also sworn to follow the law.
"For that reason, we will provide an opportunity for people of faith to have an individual prayer during a moment of silence before each board meeting," he said. "After many hours of consultation, this seems to be our only legal recourse."
Miller said that the decision to limit prayer during school activities was made by the Supreme Court many years ago, yet for the most part the public remained silent. He urged board members to become politically active on the subject.
"If you have an opinion regarding this matter, the productive place to direct your energies is at the federal level," he said.
Board Chairwoman Rosemary Quillen said she knows how she will use her moment of silence.
"During this time, I will continue to pray for guidance, wisdom and vision for our decisions as a school board," she said.
Rebecca Market, staff attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a secular organization that first challenged Lenoir City about prayer in the schools, said the "moment of silence" is acceptable to the organization.
"We're very pleased," she said.
The new policy comes only days after the district received a letter from Americans United, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that supports separation of church and state. The letter outlines what the group considers constitutional violations.
In addition to prayer during board meetings and before high school football games, the letter included new allegations of prayer before basketball games and during a graduation, and it cited posters from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
The letter specifically mentioned Lenoir City High School Principal Steve Millsaps and an alleged prayer during a 2010 graduation ceremony.
Millsaps said he had think carefully before he realized the letter was referring to a speech he made at the 2010 ceremony in which he quoted from the Bob Dylan song "Forever Young."
"Is that a prayer? I know I was thinking about one of our students who died that year and about how we were sending these kids out into the world to become adults," he said. "The words from that song expressed how I felt."
Meanwhile, the Loudon County school board continues to pray out loud before meetings. The agenda for Thursday's meeting listed prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance
Most recent Letter To Lenoir city School Board from atheist orginization
Natalie Shapero* Steven Gey Fellow shapero@au.org
(202) 466-3234 x237
1301 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
April 10, 2012
By Email and First-Class Mail
Lenoir City Board of Education
Bobby Johnson
Rick Chadwick
Glenn McNish, Sr.
Rosemary Quillen
Mitch Ledbetter
Lenoir City Schools
2145 Harrison Avenue
Lenoir City, TN 37771
Wayne Miller, Superintendent
Lenoir City Schools
2145 Harrison Ave.
Lenoir City, TN 37771
waynemiller@lenoircityschools.com
Steven Millsaps, Principal
Lenoir City High School
1485 Old Highway 95
Lenoir City, TN 37771
smillsaps@lenoircityschools.com
Re: Promotion of Religion at Lenoir City Schools
Dear Superintendent Miller, Principal Millsaps, and Board
members:
On March 12, 2012, we wrote to you about several complaints we
had received from community members about the ongoing promotion
of religion in the Lenoir City Schools. We requested an
answer within ten days. Several weeks have passed, and we have
yet to receive a response.
Although we have read press coverage of purported changes to
certain school practices, we have received no confirmation of
these changes from the school district.
Rather, according to news reports, the school district intends
to respond by saying, “Thank you very much. We will handle this
locally.” Tenn. School Board Halts Prayers at Meetings, Football
Games, Associated Press, Mar. 22, 2012, available at http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/tenn-school-board-halts-prayers-at-meetingsfootball-
games.
We assure you that the protection of your local students’ First
Amendment right to religious freedom is very much an issue of
national concern. In enforcing the
Establishment Clause against local school districts, the U.S.
Supreme Court has reiterated “how firmly embedded in our
constitutional jurisprudence is the proposition
that the several States have no greater power to restrain the
individual freedoms protected by the First Amendment than does
the Congress of the United States.”
Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 48–49 (1985). And although we
do so only as a last resort, we have not hesitated to represent
local residents in federal court against local governments that
have refused to comply with the Establishment Clause. See, e.g.,
Stewart v. Johnson County, No. 2:11-cv-12 (E.D. Tenn. 2011)
(following lawsuit by Americans United, county government
advised by Alliance Defense Fund agreed to provide plaintiff
with extensive injunctive relief, nominal damages, and
attorneys’ fees).
Accordingly, we urge you to immediately remedy the following
practices.
A. Complaints raised in our March 12 letter.
Our March 12, 2012 letter raised concerns about four practices,
none of which the School District has adequately addressed.
Prayers at board meetings/football games.
According to one media account, the school district plans to
suspend prayers at board meetings and football games. See Hugh
G. Willett, Lenoir City School System Curtailing Prayers at
Public Meetings (Mar. 1, 2012, 4:00 a.m.), http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/mar/21/lenoir-city-schoolsystem-curtailing-prayers-at/.
If true, these are welcome developments, but we have received no
confirmation of them from the school district. Please confirm
that the school district has in fact decided to suspend prayers
at these events, and please advise when these changes will take
effect.
Prayers at graduation ceremonies.
With respect to our concerns about student prayers at graduation
ceremonies, we have seen no indication that the school district
intends to suspend this practice. Even media reports reflect
only that the Superintendent has denied—contrary to the citizen
complaints that we described—that
there have been student prayers at graduation ceremonies, and
has not committed to stopping the practice. As we explained in
our March 12 letter, the First Amendment prohibits even
student-led prayers at school-sponsored graduation ceremonies.
See, e.g., Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290
(2000); Corder v. Lewis Palmer Sch. Dist. No. 38, 566 F.3d 1219
(10th Cir. 2009); Lassonde v. Pleasanton Unified Sch. Dist., 320
F.3d 979 (9th Cir. 2003); ACLU of N.J. v. Black Horse Pike Reg’l
Bd. of Educ., 84 F.3d 1471 (3d Cir. 1996) (en banc). Please
confirm that you will ensure that your high school
graduations—including this year’s ceremony—will not feature
prayers, student-led or otherwise.
Promotion of religion by physical-education teacher.
We have seen no response—in the media, or otherwise—to the
complaints that we raised about the promotion of religion by a
school physical-education teacher and coach, Ms. Herron. These
practices include reading to students from the Bible and
encouraging students to
attend meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. As
detailed in our March 12 letter, the Establishment Clause
plainly prohibits public-school teachers from
promoting religion to students. See, e.g., Lee v. York Cnty.
Sch. Div., 484 F.3d 687 (4th Cir. 2007); Doe v. Porter, 370 F.3d
558 (6th Cir. 2004); Roberts v. Madigan, 921 F.2d 1047 (10th
Cir. 1990). There should be no delay in bringing these practices
to an
immediate end.
Distribution of religious literature on school grounds by church
members.
We have received complaints that, even after our March 12
letter, members of a local church
are distributing Christian literature to students on school
grounds during the school day. As we detailed in our previous
letter, the Establishment Clause plainly prohibits a public
school from allowing a church to proselytize on school grounds
during the school day. See, e.g., Doe v. Wilson Cnty. Sch. Sys.,
564 F. Supp. 2d 766, 797 (M.D. Tenn. 2008). The school district
should likewise halt this practice immediately.
B. Additional Establishment Clause complaints.
Since our previous letter, we have also received complaints
about additional constitutional violations at Lenoir City
Schools.
Prayer by school officials at school events.
We have received complaints that the principal, Mr. Millsaps,
delivered a prayer at the high school’s 2010 graduation
ceremony, and that the high school’s athletic director has
recited the Lord’s Prayer to students over the loudspeaker
during basketball games. As the U.S. Supreme Court has explained
repeatedly, the delivery of prayers at school events is
unconstitutional— especially when requested or delivered by
school officials. See, e.g., Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 302
(Establishment Clause prohibits “invocations [that] are
authorized by government policy and take place on government
property at government-sponsored school-related events”); Lee v.
Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 587 (1992) (Establishment Clause
violation when “[a] school official, the principal, decided that
an invocation and a benediction should be given” at high-school
graduation); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) (“by using its
public school system to encourage recitation of the Regents’
prayer, the [government] has adopted a practice wholly
inconsistent with the Establishment Clause”). The prayers by the
principal and athletic director fall squarely within that
prohibition.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes posters.
We also understand that since the concerns about religion at the
school have become public, the posters advertising meetings of
the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA)—which are posted in
the highschool’s hallway—have become even more overtly
religious, and now feature prominent images of crosses. FCA
members do not have free reign to proselytize on school walls
during the school day. See, e.g., Bannon v. Sch. Dist., 387 F.3d
1208, 1217 (11th Cir. 2004) (per curiam) (upholding removal of
proselytizing FCA mural from high-school hallway). Especially
light of at least one teacher’s improper promotion of FCA
meetings, the school district must make every effort to avoid
endorsement of FCA’s mission and message.
We will continue to investigate complaints about Lenoir City
Schools and monitor the school district’s responses closely.
Please respond to the concerns raised by
this letter—as well as those identified in our March 12
letter—by the close-of-business on Monday, April 16, 2012. If
you have any questions or would like to discuss these issues
further, please contact Natalie Shapero at (202) 466-3234 or
shapero@au.org.
Sincerely,
Gregory M. Lipper, Senior Litigation Counsel
Natalie Shapero, Steven Gey Fellow*
*Admitted in Pennsylvania only. Supervised by
Gregory M. Lipper, a member of the D.C. bar.