Texas Senate passes bill allowing teacher prayer

DALLAS - The Texas Senate passed a bill that will allow teachers to pray while on duty.

While proponents say the bill clarifies what is already within teachers’ rights, opponents fear it could lead to students being forced to pray.

Senate Bill 965

What we know:

Senate Bill 965 was proposed in response to the Supreme Court’s decision, which found that a public high school football coach in Washington had the right to pray after a football game.

Republican Sen. Tan Parker of Flower Mound authored the bill to ensure that teachers in Texas could "engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty."

"One might ask why this bill is necessary if it’s already the law of the nation?" Sen. Parker said. "Putting Senate Bill 965 in the Texas law will help give greater clarity and confidence to administrators, officials and employees on exactly what can be done in regards to religious speech while on duty."

The bill passed 22 to 9 on Tuesday.

An amendment that would have prohibited the religious speech or prayer during instructional time failed.

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Democratic Sen. Jose Menendez of the San Antonio area questioned whether the bill would protect all religious speech or prayer.

"Christianity, Muslim, Jewish… would the school district have capacity to limit someone who came in and said, ‘Well, I practice Satanism?’ Would the school district be able to limit that because there is that out there," he asked.

"Religious freedom is religious freedom. I’m going to stick to that. And I think that's well-established constitutional law here in this country," Sen. Parker replied.

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The other side:

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Coach Joseph Kennedy’s case specifically addressed his First Amendment rights.

Skeptics of the Texas bill are concerned it will expand the right to pray beyond what the justices intended.

"The Kennedy decision does not allow for school prayer," argued Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat from Uvalde.

"The Kennedy decision allows a teacher on duty to have a personal religious expression. That is what we are codifying," Parker replied.

In the Supreme Court ruling, justices found that the students on the field were not captive or coerced.

"When a teacher is praying in the classroom to a captive audience and a school attempts to tell them to move the prayer to a time outside their official duties, we will have lawsuits. Your bill will have opened them to those lawsuits," said Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat from Austin.

"We just have a difference of opinion," Parker replied.

What's next:

SB 965 will now head to the House for a vote.