Mar 29, 2024 By Katherine Mansfield 3 min read

This story has been updated to correct a misprint that the letter accuses McGuffey of violating Article 41 of the Constitution.

A local school district is being accused of violating the U.S. Constitution for beginning school board meetings with prayer.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent McGuffey Area School District a letter stating that the practice violates the U.S. Constitution.

The March 21 letter refers to McGuffey School Board President Zonie Jackson’s announcement last month to begin all board meetings with prayer, which, the FFRF said, goes against separation of church and state. The letter urges the district to “immediately cease including prayer in your school board meetings.”

At the Feb. 15 meeting, Jackson announced “the majority of the board has decided that we would like to begin our board meetings with a prayer from a pastor or minister from a church within our district.”

The Rev. Caleb Rainey, of Claysville Christian Church, took the podium and thanked the school board for “the privilege and honor to be here and to lead everybody in prayer.” The exchange can be viewed on McGuffey’s YouTube livestream at about the 2:40:00 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu6885aEnY&t=475s.

The school board again opened the March meeting in prayer. The Rev. Jacob Judy, pastor of West Alexander United Methodist Church, led the invocation.

According to the FFRF, a concerned school district employee wrote to the nonprofit that they were “appalled” and “felt excluded that they were saying a Christian prayer in a public school building” during a public school board meeting.

“Needlessly including prayer at Board meetings excludes those who are among the 37% of Americans who are non-Christians, including the 49% of Generation Z who are religiously unaffiliated,” the letter said.

Though the FFRF does receive complaints about school districts nationwide opening board meetings in prayer, this case is an unusual one in the Keystone State, said Madeline Ziegler, staff attorney for the organization.

“I handle Pennsylvania specifically. I don’t see too much of this in Pennsylvania,” she said.

School board members are free to pray and worship on their own time, but opening a school board meeting in prayer is a violation of the First Amendment, Ziegler said. In 2018, the FFRF won its lawsuit against a school district in Chino Valley, Calif., after the district refused to stop praying before its board meetings. Additional similar court cases were also cited in the letter to McGuffey.

“The courts have been really consistent in holding that this is not acceptable,” Ziegler said. “Our hope is that the school board will take our concern seriously, take a look at the law that we’ve cited in this letter, and come to the conclusion that what they’re doing is illegal, and put a stop to it on their own. If not, we’ll have to discuss next steps.”

Neither McGuffey Superintendent Dr. Andrew Oberg nor school board president Jackson responded to the Observer-Reporter’s request for comment. Amy Schrempf, counsel for McGuffey School Board, said the district cannot comment on threatened litigation.