Fined For Praying In School
A U.S. Federal District Court has fined Mississippi's third largest public school district $7,500 after a minister opened up a districtwide honors assembly with a prayer invocation, an act that violated a 2013 court settlement that ordered the district to stop "proselytizing Christianity."
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves has for the second time ordered the Rankin County School District to stop allowing prayers to be held at school events. The judge has also banned the distribution of Bibles on school campuses.
The school district was ordered to pay a student plaintiff from Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, who was represented by the American Humanist Association, $2,500 because the student attended an assembly at Brandon High School in May 2014 that began with a prayer led by local Methodist pastor the Rev. Rob Gill.
