The Rankin County School
District (RCSD) in Mississippi received a $7,500 fine for allowing a prayer and
permitting Bibles to be handed out on campus by local Methodist pastor Rev. Rob
Gill at Brandon High School.
It wasn’t long after Gill
began a districtwide honors assembly with a prayer (invocation) that the U.S. Federal
District Court ruled against the RCSD – issuing it a fine for allegedly
violating a 2013 court settlement ordering the district to stop “proselytizing
Christianity.”
U.S. District Judge
Carlton Reeves reminded the district that it is a repeat offender. He is the same judge who previously banned
Bibles from being distributed on all RCSD campuses. This marks the second time he has ordered the
district to cease from permitting prayer at school events. “The district’s breach did not take very long
and it occurred in a very bold way,” Reeves stated in his judgement, according
to the Christian Post. “Its conduct displays that the district did
not make any effort to adhere to the agreed judgment.”
Reeves’ reproach for
biblical influences in the school was emphasized in his summary, where he
accused RCSD officials of attempting to indoctrinate students with Christianity
through prayer. “It deliberately went
out of its way to entangle Christian indoctrination in the education process,”
the district judge argued in his ruling. “From the accounts detailed in the record, it
appears that incorporating religious script and prayers with school activities
has been a long-standing tradition of the district.”
The atheist group,
American Humanist Association (AHA), filed the lawsuit on behalf of a student
who reportedly did not attend the high school where the prayer was made. Furthermore, the assembly was not mandatory
for any students to attend. The event
was designed for all students in the school district who received higher than
22 on their ACT college test scores.
Judge Reeves ordered
RCSD to pay the student $2,500 for having to listen to the invocation. And Reeves’ penalization of the school didn’t
stop there … as the suit brought to attention another RCSD “violation” that
took place last year. “The school
district was additionally ordered to pay the student $5,000 because the lawsuit
exposed that the school district allowed Gideons International to hand out
Bibles to 5th graders at nearby Northwest Rankin Elementary School in October
2014,” explained Christian Post reporter
Samuel Smith. In addition to the two
fines and courts costs, Reeves warned the district that he would issue stiffer
penalties if it does not cease Christian influences from appearing on its
campuses. “Along with the $7,500 in
fines, the school district will also have to pay the student’s legal fees, an
amount that will be determined at a later date,” Smith continued. “Reeves also threatened the school district
with a $10,000 fine for any future infractions of the order.”
Despite arguments from
RCSD attorneys contending that Gill’s prayers were not in violation of the
student’s 1st Amendment rights — or the court’s orders from 2013 — because
attendance was not compulsory, Judge Reeves did not acknowledge the optional
nature of the event as working toward the district’s favor.
Despite Reeve’s ruling
for the student and the atheist organization, RCSD Superintendent Lynn
Weathersby issued a statement through school board attorney Fred Harrell that
students and teachers will not cease praying. Harrell did relay, however, that RCSD staff will
need to make adjustments in order to comply with Reeve’s latest decision
against the district. “As long as there
is testing in schools, we believe that teachers, principals and students will
continue to pray,” Weathersby announced in her statement. “That being said, the school district will
certainly abide by the order of any court to the best of its ability and will
take whatever action necessary to make sure that all principals and teachers
are updated on the current status of the law and that order.”
Friend: Don’t think for
a minute that this judgment is about the so-called ‘separation of church and
state.’ If that were even a
Constitutional truth [which it is not], this judge is ruling exclusively in
mandatory favor of secular humanism … the religion of atheism.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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