Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond Friday advised Muskogee Public Schools that it was under no constitutional obligation to cancel a community prayer walk earlier this month, and offered assistance to any Oklahoma district that receives a similar demand.
The Muskogee 6th and 7th Grade Academy had scheduled a Back to School Community Prayer Walk for the morning of August 12, the day before classes began. A Wisconsin-based advocacy organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), sent the district a letter the day before the event demanding its cancellation. The district canceled the walk, removed the announcements and notified parents.
The FFRF bragged in a press release Friday, August 21 at 9:56 am about their intimidation of the school. The AG Office release arrived that same day at 4:10 pm. Is Drummond on the FFRF email list? The AG does not detail how or when he found out about the issue.
In a letter to Superintendent Jarod Mendenhall, Drummond concluded that no student was required to be on campus that day, that no student faced any consequence for staying away, and that the walk was scheduled at an hour when no instructional period existed to interrupt.
“Attendance was voluntary in the fullest sense of that word,” Drummond wrote. “Any parent or student who preferred not to come simply did not come, at no cost whatever. On those facts there is no coercion. There is no captive audience. There is no Establishment Clause violation.”
“The district was free to proceed,” he added, “and I would have said so had the district asked.”
Apparently, Muskogee Public Schools holds no institutional courage or conviction. According to FFRF, “A concerned parent had informed the state/church watchdog that on Aug. 12, Muskogee 6th and 7th Grade Academy was planning to host a school-sponsored prayer walk.”
The AG letter notes that the demand rested on a legal test the Supreme Court no longer applies. Every decision cited by FFRF was handed down between 1948 and 2000. None postdates Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the 2022 ruling in which the Court abandoned the decades-old endorsement framework and held no Establishment Clause violation.
“Much of the advice districts received before 2022 is obsolete,” Drummond wrote. “Offense is not injury.”
Drummond further noted that the organization asked the district to ensure that all future school-sponsored events be entirely secular. No court has ever imposed that requirement. Taken literally, the letter states, it would bar a district from allowing a religious group to use its facilities on the same terms as a scout troop or a civic club, which is itself the discrimination the Free Speech Clause forbids.
The Attorney General was careful to mark the limits of the guidance. Districts must still exercise care where students are required to be present, such as during the instructional day or at a mandatory assembly, and nothing in the letter permits a school to direct the content of religious exercise or compel anyone to take part.
“The line is drawn by compulsion, and by the identity of the speaker,” Drummond wrote. “It is not drawn by the presence of religion on public property.”
The letter closes by encouraging superintendents statewide to contact the Attorney General’s Office before modifying or canceling a program in response to an outside demand letter. The office will review the matter and provide an assessment at no cost to the district.
“No superintendent should have to resolve a contested constitutional question alone, on a short deadline, and under pressure from a party whose interests are adverse to the district’s,” Drummond wrote.
Let’s hope this decision is widely circulated statewide as the FFRF also wrote, “Mendenhall also verified that future school-sponsored activities would remain in compliance with the First Amendment and that the district would not organize or promote religious activities.”
Will Oklahoma’s legacy media, what is left of them, carry this notice statewide?