A Utah school district will again allow a teacher to post a document in her school’s faculty lounge inviting colleagues to join her voluntary prayer chain, according to a Christian legal firm that said barring her from doing so violated her free-speech and religious rights.
The Wasatch County School District agreed to allow first-grade teacher Taryn Israelson to again post the prayer-chain invitation in the J.R. Smith Elementary School breakroom after lawyers with the First Liberty Institute and local firm Mayer Brown sent a letter in late April highlighting concerns about Israelson’s First Amendment rights, according to First Liberty.
“This is the right decision by the school officials in light of Supreme Court decisions that have repeatedly held that the First Amendment requires public school officials to be neutral in their treatment of religion,” Keisha Russell, a First Liberty lawyer, said in a news release. “Taryn’s example should send a message to all public school districts that the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses doubly protect private religious speech.”
Israelson started the prayer chain two years ago at the school east of Salt Lake City, allowing people to opt in to be prayed for or to pray for others. She posted signs in the breakroom after getting permission from human resources. The signs said: “Need prayer? Want to help pray for others? Text Taryn to be added to the prayer chain.”
Last fall, however, the school’s principal directed Israelson to take the signs down, arguing that people could interpret their presence on district property as the district’s endorsement of religion and because “they’re in everybody’s faces,” according to First Liberty. The public-interest firm argued that allowing school staff to post secular messages — including wedding announcements and inspirational messages — but prohibiting Israelson’s prayer-chain invitations constituted unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
The reversal in Utah comes just days after a western Michigan school district agreed to allow students to sing Christian-themed songs in their upcoming talent show after receiving a similar letter from First Liberty. A teacher and the principle at West Ward Elementary School had told students that they couldn’t sing songs that are “Christian-based” and include “very clear language about worshiping God.”
The superintendent of Allegan Public Schools in Michigan told National Review that the staff members “were unfamiliar with the legal guidelines concerning religious expression in a public school setting.”
First Liberty is also representing a middle-school teacher in Connecticut who sued her school district’s leaders earlier this year after they prohibited her from posting a small crucifix near her desk in a place where other teachers had secular images, including cartoon characters and sports pennants.
The Supreme Court has ruled for decades that public schools can’t discriminate against religion, and several rulings over the last decade have made clear that schools and other government bodies can’t simply fall back on the establishment clause to prohibit religious expression on campus or in other public spaces.
Speaking at Catholic University in October, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the claim that the establishment clause requires government bodies to prohibit religious expression or funding is “a misreading of our history and tradition.”
“I think one of the principles that’s been reinforced and elaborated on is that discrimination against religion, against religious people, against religious speech, against religious organizations, is not required by the establishment clause — and is indeed prohibited by the free exercise clause and the equal protection clause,” Kavanaugh said.