Student Seeks Contempt Penalties For School's Violation of Consent Decree On Prayer

As previously reported, last year the Rankin County, Mississippi school district adopted a new policy on religion in schools in order to settle a suit by a student complaining that the district high school sponsored assemblies which promoted Christianity, and which students perceived as mandatory. The new policy was incorporated into a court-ordered consent decree. Now AP reports that the student, backed by the American Humanist Association (press release), has filed a motion to hold the school district and its administrators in contempt because of a district-wide honors assembly last month which was opened with an invocation by a Methodist minister. The student says that she felt pressured to participate in the prayer which she interpreted as containing a reference to Jesus' resurrection. (Full text of Memorandum of Law in support of contempt motion).