Legislation allowing prayer in public schools has passed with heavy support in the Mississippi House of Representatives.
House Bill 1310 was sent across the hall to the Senate on Wednesday with an 80-35 vote. The measure, authored by Republican Rep. Chuck Blackwell, has been dubbed the “Mississippi Open to Religion Act” and would require all public school districts to create a designated time for voluntary prayer and reading of religious texts, including the Bible, daily.
“Just think of how we have all these extracurricular activities already. This would be treated as extracurricular,” Republican State Rep. Celeste Hurst said of the proposal.
Prayer would be entirely optional, with students first having to get parental consent before being allowed to participate in religious activities on campuses. Schools would be prohibited from publicly broadcasting the time of prayer, and the designated time for these activities could not occur during class time or any other period where pupils are learning.
If a school or district is sued for allowing prayer or for how the time of reflection is instituted, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office would be tasked with providing legal defense for any institution facing litigation.
Similar measures have been proposed in the past, but to no avail. Though HB 1310 passed with relative ease, it did not come without detractors. House Minority Leader Robert Johnson outright called the bill unconstitutional. Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Jeffery Harness questioned how schools would accommodate students of multiple religions without ultimately sponsoring religious activities and opening themselves up to unnecessary lawsuits.
“How are schools going to police a situation where you have an Islamic prayer here, a Christian prayer here, and a Hindu prayer behind me?” Harness asked. “How do we expect the schools to police that?”
State Rep. Jansen Owen, a Republican who serves on the House Education Committee, said the schools could create separate times for students of different faiths to use their facilities for voluntary prayer and reading of religious texts, while simultaneously not sponsoring the activities. As things stand, students in Mississippi can pray individually at lunch or other break times, as long as they’re not disrupting learning.
“The purpose of the bill is to accommodate individuals who want to get together with their fellow believers of whatever religious faith they may carry and pray or read their religious text during the school day,” Owen said.