Arizona GOP pushes bill to allow school board prayers, despite obvious constitutional violations

HB 2110 is a blunt attempt to force Christianity into public education. It must be defeated.

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Over a decade ago, in Greece v. Galloway, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that invocations at local government meetings were legal… but only if those prayers were not limited to one group and no one was being coerced into participating. Basically, as long as there was a fair way for various speakers to be included in the mix—including non-Christian ones—there was no legal problem with prayers at meetings. Since then, we’ve seen plenty of Humanists and Satanists and non-Christians push to deliver those invocations.

That ruling, importantly, only applied to the “limited context” of legislative prayers. Not to school board meetings where children are expected to attend (even if just to be honored or receive an award). The expectation at school board meetings is that there would be coercive pressure on children to join in if they were prayers. There’s also no history or tradition of prayers at school board meetings, which makes it harder for conservative justices to argue they should be legal.

Whenever school boards have attempted to institute prayers at meetings—or whenever they’ve been sued over the prayers they’re imposing on everyone—they’ve lost in court.

Despite all that, Republicans in Arizona are now trying to give public school boards permission to pray anyway.

House Bill 2110 would allow any school board member, upon request, to pray during meetings. That’s it. That’s the whole bill. (The bulk of the bill just defines what counts as a public educational institution.)

When the bill’s Republican sponsor, State Rep. Teresa Martinez, introduced the bill last week, she said the only reason school boards weren’t allowed to have invocations was… for a reason she conjured entirely out of her ass: School boards are predominantly run by Democrats.

… We pray in the House. We pray in Senate. We pray in Washington, D.C. We pray in city council meetings. We pray in county meetings. The only place that we are not allowed to pray—statewide, uniformly—is a school board and that is because school boards are predominantly one-party rule.

And I do think that it is a fairness issue—that if one person would like to pray at the beginning of the meeting, we should allow to do that.

School boards are by no means a “Democratic” thing. Martinez appears to have no understanding of why government meetings are permitted to have invocations but school boards are not.

Then came the questions. Democratic State Rep. Stephanie Simacek asked why school board members couldn’t just pray to themselves, silently.

Martinez ignored the crux of that question and suggested school boards do plenty of things out loud—including the Pledge of Allegiance. Should ALL of those things be done silently?! (Answer: Yes, of course.)

SIMACEK: Why is it not possible for people to just—I serve on the school board—to say the prayer, like, to themselves, and why does it have to be this display of something? Why are we bringing this into our governing board meetings when... By all means, if you want to pray, say it. I don’t think it necessarily has to be out loud. It can be in your heart. It could be in your head. It can happen if you want to say it out loud before the meeting or after the meeting. I’m just not understanding why we’re bringing this into our governing boards. Our jobs are to make sure that we’re making the right choices for our students. And I don’t see how this is... Yeah, can you just answer to that, please?

MARTINEZ: … I’m going to say that that goes to uniformity. Why must we do the land acknowledgment? Why can’t we just simply say that in our mind, we’re going to acknowledge the land? Yet, it is pushed upon many school board members to do the land acknowledgement. Why do we feel the need to do that? Why do we feel the need to do the prayer? Why do we need to feel the need to do the Pledge? Why can’t we just privately say that to ourselves? I pledge allegiance.

It is because we are in a public body. We are here representing the people. And our Constitution, our Founders, our framers of the Constitution, have decided that it is important. Freedom of religion is why many, many people came over from Europe.

I understand what you’re saying, though. I respect what you’re saying with regards, how come you just can’t say a private little prayer to yourself? I think it’s important for the community to know where you’re at. I think it’s important for the community, as a body, to see what that board represents about education. In many communities, Hispanic communities, they’re very Catholic, and they love God.

If you don’t love God, you don’t have to pray, you can walk out, you can sit quietly, you don’t have to be there. But if you love God and you look at the Constitution, I think that that’s appropriate.

Land acknowledgments are secular and not an indictment of anyone’s beliefs. The Pledge is an anti-immigration religious anthem and a complete waste of time.

But if Martinez agrees to get rid of all those performative rituals, including her prayer idea, great. To hell with all of them.

That said, she still ignores the bigger issue: Children cannot be expected to just walk out or not pray. They’ll go along with what the adults are doing, and that’s the reason the prayers are a problem.

Suppose this bill were to pass, though. Let’s suppose Christian prayers were permitted at meetings. Wouldn’t that open the door to non-Christian prayers that might rub some people the wrong way?

A different Democrat, State Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, raised exactly that point. What if Satanists or Muslims decided to take up the offer to pray? Would Martinez be okay with that?

She begrudgingly said she would be… perhaps because the odds of that happening are slim. But her response included a completely made-up story:

GUTIERREZ: What if, let’s say it’s not a Catholic prayer. Let’s say it’s a Muslim prayer. Or a Satanist prayer. What then?

MARTINEZ: … Prayer is prayer. Somebody wants to do a Catholic prayer, beautiful. Somebody wants to do a Baptist prayer, that’s fine, too. Somebody wants to do a Muslim prayer, that’s fine, too.

Now the devil worshiping. Okay. Not my cup of tea. That’s just not who I’m about. And if I’m not mistaken, we had a senator two sessions ago, maybe two years ago, who decided to bring the Satanic… body… the Satanic worshippers… to the Senate and acknowledge them, thank them for being here, thank them for their good work. And you know what? He was allowed to do it! And then you know what? His voters sent him a message—and he did not return.

If a school board member wants to stand on the dais and do a Satanic prayer, that’s fine.

In some ways, that’s the right answer. Once that door is opened, school board members would have to allow non-Christian prayers, including ones that make them deeply uncomfortable. And I suspect there would be all kinds of malicious compliance from board members who would say those non-Christian prayers specifically for that purpose.

Martinez says she’s fine with that, presumably because she doesn’t think that’ll seriously happen… but we’ve seen plenty of examples of that happening in local and state governments. It would undoubtedly happen at school board meetings too.

But about that senator.

In February of 2024, then-State Sen. Juan Mendez acknowledged members of The Satanic Temple in the chambers when there was a blatantly unconstitutional bill being considered that would have banned Satanic displays—and only those—on public grounds. That bill ultimately failed, but not before Republicans expressed all kinds of faux-outrage about how a Democratic lawmaker was welcoming those evil evil Satanists (cue loud gasps)… even though they reject belief in an actual Satan.

After being term-limited from running for the State Senate again, Mendez ran for his old State House seat in 2024, but narrowly lost in the Democratic primary. (The two candidates who advanced to the general election each earned 34% of the votes. Mendez earned 32%.) There’s absolutely no indication that voters rejected him because of his support for church/state separation or the Satanist group.

Anyway. After all that conversation and public comments from people who had their own thoughts about the bill—most of them opposed to it—it was time for a vote from the House Education committee.

They voted in favor of it 8-4. The vote was along party lines, with one Democrat, State Rep. Lydia Hernandez, embarrassingly supporting it anyway. (She’s also an opponent of abortion rights, so this tracks.) On Monday, the House Rules committee unanimously approved it as well. While I doubt Gov. Katie Hobbs will sign it—again, it’s absolutely illegal—it’s still disturbing to see a bill like this making its way through the legislative process.

When Jeanne Casteen, the Executive Director of Secular AZ, testified against the bill, she mentioned the myriad legal problems but also suggest they consider following Matthew 6:5—the verse about not praying to be seen by others—and that this was arguably a parental rights issue because Republicans were acting like the rights of only one type of parent deserved to be honored.

The bill needs to be defeated because it’s trying to destroy the delicate boundary between church and state in a place where children’s education is at stake. Christians who support these bills have a desperate need to perform their prayers because apparently God won’t listen if they say those prayers to themselves. If anything, this bill shows how weak their faith is. If they can’t force their religion onto others, they see no point in it.

To put it another way, this is a bill meant to appease adults, not help students. It’s meant to give Christianity an unfair leg up and turn it into some kind of default civic faith for everyone.

Conservatives are pushing for bills like this because they’re just hoping no one sues or that a right-leaning judiciary will overturn existing law. And even when these bills fail, they succeed at shifting the Overton window to a place where Christianity replaces religious neutrality.

Opposing this bill isn’t anti-religious. It’s a way to make sure school boards are doing the jobs members were elected to do.

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