Faith leaders pray with President Donald Trump during a rally for evangelical supporters at the King Jesus International Ministry church, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
By Our Reporter & News Agencies
President Donald Trump has issued new guidelines to ensure that public school students in the United States are allowed to engage in constitutionally protected prayer and worship.
He called the new guideline “the Right to Pray.”
“Government must never stand between the people and God,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with students of faith from across the United States on Thursday.
Mr. Trump warned that there is a “growing totalitarian” bent on the Left against faith. In 1962, the U.S Supreme court banned public school-sponsored prayer, while allowing students to privately meet and pray on school grounds.
The Trump administration’s guidance will give students and parents the platform to make complaints about faith discrimination to state education departments, according to administration officials.
The new guidance also makes clear that students can read religious texts or pray during recess and other non-instructional periods, organize prayer groups, and express their religious beliefs in their assignments.
To receive Federal funds, local educational agencies must confirm that their policies do not prevent or interfere with the constitutionally-protected rights outlined in the guidance.
“In public schools around the country, authorities are stopping students and teachers from praying, sharing their faith, or following their religious beliefs. It is totally unacceptable,” Trump said.
According to local media in USA, updates to federal guidance on school prayer is required by federal law every two years, but hasn’t been done since 2003.
“President Trump is committed to making sure that people of faith, particularly children, are not subjected to illegal punishment or pressure for exercising their constitutionally protected rights,” said White House Domestic Policy Council Director Joe Grogan.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that public schools cannot sponsor an official prayer or coerce students into praying. But students generally can pray at any time, as long as it’s not disruptive.
Mr. Grogan cited the case in 2018 of students at Honey Grove Middle School in Texas who gathered in the school lunchroom to pray for a former classmate hurt in a car accident, only to be warned by their principal not to do it again.
