Prayer period in schools backed by Texas Legislature

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Despite constitutional concerns from opponents, the Texas Legislature forged ahead in a key vote on Thursday to allow a period for prayer or religious study — part of a larger national movement to infuse more Christianity into schools.

With seven Democrats and all Republicans present voting yes, the House approved the measure 91 to 51 at the end of hours of debate in which some lawmakers questioned bill language that allows teachers to encourage students to pray — including praying according to a different faith.

The Senate had voted 23-7 for the measure in March. After a final, procedural vote that could happen as early as Friday, the bill will head to Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it. The bill goes into effect September 1.

The bill, Senate Bill 11 by Galveston Republican Sen. Mayes Middleton, allows school districts to adopt a policy to provide students and staff a daily period of prayer or time to read a religious text.

The bill requires school districts to take a vote on whether or not to allow the prayer or study period within six months of the law going into effect — but permits students, with consent of a parent or guardian, to have a prayer or study period either way. It also bans any prayer or religious reading over a loudspeaker, or in the presence of any student who does not have a consent form signed.

Rep. David Spiller, a Republican from Jacksboro who sponsored the bill in the House, said the bill provides clarity for school districts that are “caught between community expectations and legal uncertainty.”

“SB 11 is about protecting the freedom of those who choose to pray, and just as importantly, protecting the rights of those who choose not to,” he said on the House floor.

Proponents of this and related bills say teaching Christianity encourages positive behavior and is core to learning the nation’s history — a message that has resurged in recent years as part of a broader national movement that considers the idea of church-state separation a myth and that regularly condemns what movement leaders say is a generations-long moral decline.

“We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust.’ You have to ask: are our schools better or worse off since prayer was taken out in the 1960s?” Middleton wrote in a statement provided to the Tribune upon the bill’s passage. “Litigious atheists are no longer going to get to decide for everyone else if students and educators exercise their religious liberties during school hours.”

Supporters in the state and beyond have been emboldened by the 2019 Supreme Court decision Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the court ruled a football coach could lead prayers on the field after games.

But Robert Tuttle, a professor of religion and law at George Washington University, said allowing a private individual to pray — as in the Kennedy case — is different from offering students time to pray.

Last June, a federal court struck down a Louisiana law requiring all public school classrooms display the Ten Commandments — the first state to pass such a law. The state is appealing the decision.

Texas is considering the same policy, one of at least 16 states to do so. If passed, it would be the largest state to require the Ten Commandments to be in every classroom.

Tuttle said it’s hard to see how the Texas law on a period of prayer might pass legal muster, given that the First Amendment prohibits the state imposing a religion.

“The state really is just acting with the intention of promoting religious observance, and that's not one of the permitted purposes the state has under current law,” he said.

He also said that despite the Supreme Court trending in a more conservative direction, its decision Thursday that leaves in place a prohibition on the establishment of a religious charter school in Oklahoma could mean that the Court, for now, is not throwing out that principle.

Opponents — free speech and civil rights groups such as the Texas Freedom Network and the American Civil Liberties Union — say that the bill encroaches on religious freedoms.

The teachers union said it opposes SB 11 because they believe it violates the principle of separation of church and state: “Public schools are not supposed to be Sunday school,” said spokesperson Clay Robison.

Vikki Goodwin, a Democrat from Austin, said on the House floor Thursday that students were already allowed to pray if they chose to, and that the school voucher bill passed earlier this session helps families send students to private schools, some of which offer religious instruction.

“Government officials have no business interfering with these deeply personal and constitutionally-protected matters,” she said.

During the debate, other Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. James Talarico of Austin, raised questions about the language removing the prohibition on encouraging students to pray. Would this mean, he asked, that a teacher could recommend students pray in a manner prescribed by a different faith, such as Islam.

Spiller affirmed that could happen, but said it wasn’t relevant to the debate, and that district employment contracts could prohibit that.

In 2021, Texas signed into law a requirement that schools display “In God We Trust” signs, but only if they were donated by a private foundation. In 2024, the state board of education approved Bible-infused teaching materials.

Beyond the period of prayer and the Ten Commandments measures, arguments in favor of emphasizing Christianity in schools were part of the consideration of other bills moving through the Legislature this session, including one on teaching the history of communism and another requiring schools to use the terms “Anno Domini” (AD) — Latin for “in the year of the Lord,” and “Before Christ” (BC) when expressing dates, starting in the 2026-27 school year.

Disclosure: Texas Freedom Network has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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