Schools grapple with legality of prayer rooms for Muslim students

In general, schools are not in violation of the First Amendment’s clause banning the establishment of religion when they give students a neutral place to pray as long as the prayers are not school-sanctioned or led by a school employee, says NSBA attorney Lisa Soronen. Nevertheless, gray areas remain, and many issues have yet to be tested in the courts.

District leaders in San Diego learned how divisive this issue can be when a plan to allow Muslim students to use a prayer room at a Carver Elementary School attracted nationwide media attention.

The situation first arose last year when more than 100 Muslim students who had attended a failed charter school transferred to Carver, say Brent North, an attorney who specializes in constitutional law and represents the San Diego Unified School District. Almost all of those students were refugees from the civil war in Somalia.

During the 2006-07 school year, several accommodations were made for these students, North says, including a special afternoon recess during which students who wanted to pray could do so while other students took part in other activities. An empty classroom was made available for those who wanted to pray, but North stressed it was “not designated as a prayer room.”

In response to some complaints, North says changes have been made for the upcoming school year. The afternoon recess will be dropped and a new additional lunch period, probably 12:45 to 1:15 p.m., will be scheduled, during which students may pray voluntarily.

Optional single-gender classes -- also offered last year to accommodate the Muslim students -- will be discontinued, North says, because “the distraction raised in the media about the single-gender classes detracted from their educational value.” The school will, however, continue to offer instruction in the Arabic language.

The challenge, North says, is that the children’s religion requires them to pray at certain times of the day, which vary depending on the sun’s position in the sky. The later lunch period will give students enough time to pray, as well as carry out the obligatory washing rituals. (There are no plans to install foot baths, as several universities have done.)

According to North, the accommodations at Carver were blown out of proportion when a substitute teacher reported that a teacher’s aide darkened a classroom’s door and windows and led the Muslim students in prayer.

“No part of that accusation was true,” North says. “Students were not told, instructed, or encouraged to pray.”

Nevertheless, the substitute teacher appeared on national conservative news programs, which generated a great deal of media attention, leading some conservative Christian groups to demand that Christian students be allowed to pray in school.

The Pacific Justice Institute, based in Sacramento, Calif., for example, wants an hour set aside in the school day for prayer for students of all religions.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, which represents the rights of Christians, says Carver’s policy might be “well-intentioned,” but it is “violating the law and discriminating against other religions.”

Allowing Muslims to pray at school “flies in the face of 50 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the Establishment Clause,” Thompson says. “If it is going to be done, the school must accommodate Christians, Jews, and all religions.”

North disagrees with that reasoning, noting that while some Christians believe they must pray every day, there are no set times for prayer.

Because the compulsory education law requires students to be at school at the time Muslims are supposed to pray, North says, “our duty is not to strip a child of their rights to religious devotion.”

Martin Crim, an attorney with Smith & Davenport law firm in Manassas, Va., who has helped sort out the Muslim prayer issue for several Northern Virginia schools, says it’s easier than school officials first think.

For example, when one high school principal learned that Muslim students wanted a clean, appropriate place to pray for 25 minutes on Fridays, an empty classroom was made available during lunch.

When school boards face this issue, they should “handle it with tact and diplomacy,” Crim advised. “See what people’s needs are and see what’s acceptable.”

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says there are two key issues: “At what point is accommodation constitutionally required? And at what point is accommodating a religion not constitutional? In other words, when is it going too far?”

When it comes to accommodating group activities like daily prayer, Lynn says, the trend is to go too far, which he believes is what happened in San Diego. “To coordinate a normal school activity like recess with prayer time is unnecessary and probably unconstitutional,” he says.

When a school provides more in the way of accommodation than is required, “you are really asking for trouble,” Lynn says. “Prayer rooms raise significant constitutional issues.” It is not permissible to “change the curriculum or alter other fundamental parts of the school day to accommodate religion.”

“School boards and school lawyers do want to do the right thing, but sometimes haven’t thought out the implications of meeting religious groups’ demands for often dramatic accommodations,” Lynn says.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of students to undertake voluntary, student-initiated prayer during the school day in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe in 2000.

As long as the prayer is not school sanctioned and is not disruptive, it should not be a problem, Soronen says. But, as yet, “there has been no crystal clear ruling” on the constitutionality of a room set aside for prayers.

Other accommodations for Muslim students are less difficult, Soronen says. For example, food containing pork can be clearly labeled; students can be excused for absences during the religious holiday of Eid; and students can be excused from physical education classes during the month-long Ramadan fast.

And while most state laws would uphold the rights of students to wear head coverings, she says, districts might have more authority to bar teachers from wearing religious garb because it could be seen as sending a message to students in support of a particular religion.

In addition to the school prayer advocates, other conservatives have latched on to the Muslim accommodations issue as a plot to further an Islamic terrorism agenda.

According to Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center, many pro-Muslim groups have a hidden agenda of making the United States a Muslim country. “Muslims have been very effective in portraying themselves as victims.” Giving them accommodations to attract them to public schools “won’t moderate their extreme views. They’ll just bring their extremism to public schools,” he says. 

The perception of many people that the Muslim religion promotes terrorism and inequality -- and that privately run Muslim schools in the United States, as well as the Middle East, teach hatred and violence -- “is all the more reason why public schools should try to include these students and integrate them into American society,” North says.