After Arizona school board members were shut down for praying at governing meetings, Republicans in the Legislature want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
GOP lawmakers advanced a bill that would allow prayer during school board meetings. The bill sparked a lively debate during the House Education committee meeting in late January about whether the First Amendment was intended more to protect freedom of or freedom from religion.
Republicans argued it should be obvious that school board members be allowed to pray at meetings, while Democrats argued it was not a top-of-mind issue for Arizona voters and it could attract costly lawsuits.
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The First Amendment bans the government from establishing or favoring one religion, but it also protects the public’s free exercise of religion. The two safeguards are often in tension with one another, with different factions disputing which takes priority.
Clarity over which clause takes priority is further complicated when the rights of an elected official or someone who represents a government institution are debated. The question becomes: Does that government official have free exercise rights, or would that religious practice create the reality or appearance that the government had a preferred faith?
Here’s what to know about the proposal.
What the school board meeting prayer bill does
What it does: House Bill 2110 would allow a school board member to pray during a governing board meeting if they request to do so.
Who proposed it: Rep. Teresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande, who represents Pinal County and parts of Maricopa and Pima counties.
Would it apply to all religions? Yes. Nothing in the bill excludes any type of faith, and when Martinez was asked if she intended for it to protect all religions, even Satanists, she agreed. Martinez argued it was valuable for the public to know more about their elected representatives’ faith, and she suggested that someone who engaged in Satanism likely wouldn’t be well received by the electorate but would nonetheless be welcome to do so.
What prompted the bill
In 2023, Peoria Unified School District Governing Board President Heather Rooks began reciting Bible verses during the portion of the meeting reserved for opening remarks. After she quoted Isaiah 41:10 on Feb. 9, the non-profit organization Secular AZ accused the district of violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause because the organization believed Rooks’ comments were government-endorsed religious expression.
The district’s lawyer, Lisa Smith, later told board members reciting Bible verses during board meetings violated the Establishment Clause.
A similar scenario played out Aug. 7, 2025. Phoenix Union High School District board member Jeremiah Cota was asked to read a “Land Acknowledgement Statement,” but instead he began reciting “The Lord’s Prayer.”
“I’m so sorry to interrupt you board member. We can’t have a religious prayer before we start to read the land acknowledgement,” Eileen Fernandez, the district’s attorney, said.
Does prayer during a government meeting violate the First Amendment?
A few federal court cases give guidance about whether such prayer is allowed. The decision typically comes down to whether the government is coercing the public and specifics about who’s involved and the intent.
In 2018, the federal Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found a California school board’s opening prayer violated the Establishment Clause because the meetings typically included schoolchildren “whose attendance was not truly voluntary and whose relationship to school district officials, including the Board, was not one of full parity.”
That case didn’t get appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, so the opinion doesn’t bind the nation; it does, however, apply to Arizona as one of nine states and two U.S. territories the Ninth Circuit covers.
Some believe the Supreme Court’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case in 2022 paves the way for school board meeting prayer. The decision said a high school football coach in Bremerton, Washington, praying on the field after games with students was not an Establishment Clause violation.
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court in Town of Greece v. Galloway found prayer during the New York town’s government meetings did not violate the First Amendment — even considering the majority of the prayers were Christian. The 5-4 opinion said the First Amendment wasn’t meant to ban legislative prayers, and that prayer was part of law-making tradition going back to the first Congress. But a key factor, in the majority’s view, was that the prayers were meant for the lawmakers, not the public.
High court justices and federal judges have made distinctions for settings that include children.
In 1991, the Supreme Court in Lee v. Weisman found a prayer during high school graduation in Providence, Rhode Island, unconstitutional because the Justices considered the students particularly susceptible to peer pressure and found the school’s rules coercive.
What’s next for the Arizona school board meeting prayer bill?
The bill still needs a full vote by the Arizona House of Representatives and if passed would move to the Senate. If it passes both chambers, it would still need approval by Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.
Reporting by Taylor Seely, Arizona Republic
