A state senator in Indiana introduced a bill on Thursday that would give public school districts the authority to mandate daily recitations of the Lord’s Prayer in public classrooms.

The bill, introduced on the first day of the new legislative session by Republican Senator Dennis Krause, outlines Kruse’s reasoning for requiring school prayer:

“In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen, the governing body of a school corporation or the equivalent authority of a charter school may require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day. The prayer may be recited by a teacher, a student, or the class of students.”

Kruse’s bill would unquestionably run afoul of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that mandating school prayer is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Even fellow Republicans in the Indiana senate don’t think much of Kruse’s bill, with Republican Senate President Pro Tempore assigning it to a committee often considered a graveyard for legislation according to the Indianapolis Star.

This is not the first time Sen. Dennis Kruse, a Republican who also happens to chair the Senate education committee, has tried to inject Christianity into public schools. Last year, he led a push to introduce creationism into the science curriculum, and when that failed he tried to pass a bill that would have required teachers to provide “some kind of research to support that what they are teaching is true or not true.”

Despite the clear violation of the First Amendment, conservatives have taken a renewed interest in school prayer after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Several prominent conservatives, including Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, used the deaths of 27 people — including 20 elementary school students — as an opportunity to blame the lack of religion in schools for gun violence.

Earlier this week, Missouri’s Amendment 2 ballot measure — dubbed the “right to pray” amendment — passed the state legislature with 83 percent of the vote. The amendment’s backers claim it puts important protections in place for Missouri’s Christians, who they say are often “public targets” despite the fact that Christians currently represent 80 percent of the state’s population.

The ballot language said the amendment will ensure religious liberty by allowing Missouri school children to express their beliefs openly in school and permitting state-funded schools to publicly display the Bill of Rights, both expressions that are already protected. In advance of the vote, the American Civil Liberties Union called the summary on the ballot “misleading because all people in Missouri currently enjoy very robust protections of their religious liberties” under both the state constitution and the U.S. Constitution.

Amendment 2 isn’t simply a superfluous reinforcement of existing protections, however. Although the ballot summary did not explicitly mention the section of the amendment that far oversteps the precedent of the separation between church and state, the “right to pray” amendment will also allow students to refuse to participate in any school assignments they believe violate their religious beliefs.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that advocacy and legal groups are already gearing up to fight against the new amendment:

“This was misleading in its presentation and possibly unconstitutional in its application, so now we’re headed for the courts,” said Karen Aroesty of the Anti-Defamation League of Missouri and Southern Illinois. “We’ll let the next branch of the democratic process do its part, and I suspect a case will be on file pretty soon.”

Critics have warned the amendment will indeed open the door to taxpayer-funded lawsuits.

“This is going to be a nightmare for school districts, which will end up getting sued by individuals on both sides of church-state debate,” said Alex Luchenitser, associate legal director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “This is the most far-out constitutional amendment we’ve seen in the church-state area.”

The ACLU warns that giving students the power to reject any part of their academic assignments represents a “truly profound change in educational law” that will “adversely affect the quality of education in Missouri.” However, it is filing suit over yet another problematic aspect of the far-reaching law: while the amendment strengthens religious protections for students in state-funded schools and legislators on government property, it actually lessens the religious freedom of the state’s inmates, stripping prisoners of their state constitutional protections for religious expression.

States like Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and Missouri have also moved toward allowing students to pursue religiously-based education in public schools, such as creationism or intelligent design in science classes. Louisiana’s Department of Education is currently under fire for funneling state funds into religious schools with Bible-based curricula.

On her Facebook page last week, Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) explained her view that schools would be acting wisely and constitutionally if they start forcing students to read Christian Proverbs:

Formal prayer has been taken out of our schools. How about this idea? Read from the book of Proverbs from the Bible. Proverbs is a book of wisdom. Proverbs is in the Holy Scriptures for Christians and Jews. As for other religions – the wisdom won’t do them any harm…I say have a reading out of Proverbs each day in our classrooms.

Riddle’s suggestion that forcing students to listen to Christian proverbs is constitutional is wrong. The Supreme Court held that both school-led prayer and scripture readings are unconstitutional over forty years ago because the First Amendment prohibits public schools from promoting one religion over another or over no religion at all. Though Riddle claims the Book of Proverbs is a neutral “book of Wisdom,” she later admits that the reading of the proverbs is a Christian text which “won’t harm” people of “other religions.”

This is not the first time that Riddle’s ideas have been riddled with flaws. In 2010, Riddle claimed that pregnant women were coming to the United States to have babies “with the nefarious purpose of turning them into little terrorists, who will then come back to the U.S. and do us harm.” With no facts to back her up “terrorist babies” claim, Riddle became a symbol of completely unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories.

– Ben Sherman

At a time when the national political debate is dominated by questions of religious freedoms, dueling headlines on the Miami Herald’s website underscore how self-described defenders of faith are often only interested in promoting freedom for some and not for all

Yesterday, within the span of 24 hours, the Florida House passed a bill to allow prayer in public schools and another to crack down on the supposed threat of Sharia law.

In a lopsided 88-27 vote, the chamber okayed a bill to allow any student to deliver “inspirational messages,” including religious prayers, at public-school events. “Look at what just happened in Ohio,” one lawmaker said, referencing the recent school school shooting there. “The kids need to have prayer at school.” Another explained the need by citing the “sex, gambling and all of the moral decay that’s on our televisions and radios.”

The ACLU and Anti-Defamation League believe the bill violates the separation of Church and State and have threatened legal action. Meanwhile, the other bill bans the use of “foreign law,” with an implicit focus on the supposed dangers of Sharia. When asked, the bill’s sponsor couldn’t point to a single cases in Florida in which a judge ruled on Sharia, but said the state needs to “jump in front of the problem.”

Civil libertarians and Jewish lawmakers are also outraged by the measure, as it may “void divorces mediated through Jewish tribunals.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Florida is fighting back. “The alleged threat of Islamic or other religious or foreign law to Florida’s court system is completely illusory, and the Senate’s consideration of this measure is an unwise use of resources,” said ADL’s Andrew Rosenkranz.

Carin Marie Porr, of the Florida Bar Association, pointed out that Florida law “already refuse to support the laws of another state or country that contradicts our public policy,” saying the anti-Sharia bill “clearly goes against the fundamental rights of the people of Florida.”

While neither bill explicitly targets any religion, the school prayer bill was pushed by evangelical Christians and will likely be used by them most, while the anti-Sharia law clearly targets Muslims and may be based on xenophobia.