Ohio —

In West Portsmouth, Ohio, FFRF put a stop to the Washington-Nile Local School District Board of Education’s longstanding practice of opening board meetings with a prayer delivered by sitting board-members.

A district community member reported that the Washington-Nile Board of Education had been opening meetings with prayer. A review of available minutes from the board’s 2024 meetings revealed that each meeting had been beginning with a prayer led by a board member.

“It is coercive, insensitive and intimidating to force nonreligious and non-Christian citizens to choose between making a public showing of their nonbelief by refusing to participate in the prayer or else display deference toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe, but which their school board members clearly do,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to the board’s president.

In response to FFRF’s letter, District Superintendent Christopher N. Rapp addressed the situation to confirm that action had been taken. “The Washington-Nile Local Board of Education no longer opens with prayer,” he wrote.

The post Washington-Nile School District Board of Education’s longstanding practice of opening board meetings with a prayer has stopped (November 2025) appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.