Florida public schools and religion are increasingly entwined and moving further in that direction

To many religious Florida lawmakers, there’s a deep need to return God to the center of public life.

Rep. Taylor Yarkosky, a Clermont Republican, says a constituent once asked him if he could do anything legislatively that he wanted, what would it be?

“I would put God back in everything we’ve taken God out of since the 1980’s, when I was a kid growing up, when Ronald Reagan was president,” he replied. “And I truly believe that is the crux of a lot of what we deal with up here.”

Yarkosky was speaking in a meeting of the House Education and Employment committee, of which he is the vice chair, which approved a proposal that would amend the state Constitution to “provide protection from discrimination for student and school personnel religious expression in public schools.”

The measure is called “Protection of Religious Expression in Public Schools” (HJR 583), and is sponsored by Reps. Chase Tramont, R- Port Orange, and Berny Jacques, R-Seminole.

For instance, it would allow students to wear clothing, accessories and jewelry that display a religious message. And they could organize prayer groups and religious clubs to the same extent that students can organize secular activities and groups.

Meanwhile, Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, is sponsoring SB 1006, which would put essentially the same protections into statute. It’s called the “Florida Student and School Personnel First Amendment and Religious Liberties Act.”  Rep. David Borrero, R-Hialeah, is carrying its House companion (HB 835).

“We already have on the books in Florida that students are free to express their religious beliefs when they're in school,” said Yarborough. “And so, we want to make sure that from a political and ideological standpoint, we're also finding some balance with regard to what they can express. And obviously, we don't want them to be penalized in any of their coursework or expression.”

According to the bill language, “A school district may not discriminate against a student club or group based on the religious, political, or ideological viewpoints expressed by the students or the club; or any requirement that the leaders or members of the club affirm and adhere to the club’s sincerely held beliefs, comply with the club’s standards of conduct, or further the club’s mission or purpose, as defined by the student club.”

“We haven't moved the bills yet,” Yarborough said, “because we're still trying to get input and get feedback from individuals out there about it. But we just want students to know in our Florida schools that if they wish to, you know, express themselves based on sincerely held beliefs, that the schools are not going to say, ‘No, you can't do that.’ And, you know, but it has to be balanced.”

But the Rev. Dr. Russell Meyer, executive director of the Florida Council of Churches, says the bill contains no controls to make certain there will be any balance.

“They want to be politically protected for having the freedom to tell us we must convert to their religion,” he said. “This is about whether a person of the non-dominant perspective can go about their school life without being bullied or coerced against their conscience.”

Meyer points to the fact that Christianity is the dominant religion of the United States.

The Pew Research Center conducts a Religious Landscape Study, the most recent in 2023-24, surveying more than 35,000 Americans about their religious affiliations, beliefs, and practices.

According to the Pew survey, 62 percent of Americans identify as Christians. Of those, Evangelical Protestants are the largest subset with 23 percent and Catholics second-largest with 19 percent. Seven percent of Americans identify with other religions: Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu. And 29 percent are religiously unaffiliated.

“The dominant religion in the culture may be Christianity, but the dominant religion in the public school system is certainly not Christianity,” says John Stemberger, president of Liberty Council Action, a national advocacy group. “That is secular humanism, the presupposition that God does not exist. And many people are absolutely hostile to the values stemming from the Christian faith or the Jewish faith, or maybe even the Muslim faith – in maybe some North Florida counties, you may have that.”

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government, including public school officials, to stay neutral in its treatment of religion. That’s why teachers and other school personnel may not lead students in prayer or other religious practices.

The measure has prompted strong stands on both sides – especially in terms of its protections for student clubs and their “sincerely held beliefs.”

Rev. Susan Gage, an Episcopal priest, says that under the bill, Satanists would have the same political rights in public schools.

“I think they were trying to write some words into the bill that were trying to address that,” she said, “but it really doesn’t…What if their ‘sincerely-held belief’ is that Jews need to be killed, that we need to have segregated schools, that gays and lesbians, trans, bisexuals all need to be put in concentration camps? What if that’s their ‘sincerely-held belief’?”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation Action Fund, another national group, warns that such language could marginalize students who do not share the “favored” beliefs.

“The Constitution already protects student speech,” wrote Annie Laurie Gaylor, the group’s president, in a December press release. “What this bill really does is privilege religion, particularly Christianity, by wrapping it in the language of free expression and using it as a weapon against educators and our secular public schools.”

According to Yarborough, “There can't be any promotion of violence or promotion of anything that will break the rules of the school or be disruptive to the educational process or anything that goes beyond your typical accommodations that we would offer under law. But again, we're just trying to balance it and make sure they know that they have the ability to be expressive.”

John Labriola of the Christian Family Coalition Florida is lobbying for the measure. He points to “the '60s, where the Bible was taken out of the school and a lot of anti-religious rhetoric was going on to ban people from basically being able to pray in school.”

“However, in recent years, we have felt that we need to get back to the foundational principles, which is that the individuals have a right to freedom of expression, as protected in the First Amendment,” he said. “Their First Amendment rights don't end the moment they enter a school board building.”

“The bottom line is that religious expression has a place in the public square,” said the Rev. Canon Allison DeFoor. “We encountered those concerns when Gov. (Jeb) Bush created Faith- and Character-Based prisons. With careful attention to making sure that room was made for all at the table, a model was developed that never was challenged in court, and had a 15 percent recidivism rate vs. 65 percent in the general population. A clear win, so it can be done.”

DeFoor is a form prosecutor, public defender, judge and sheriff of Monroe County. He later served as an Episcopal priest in four prisons in North Florida. In the interest of full disclosure, he's also a member of FLCGA's (Florida Center for Government Accountability) advisory board.

“If it could be done in prisons,” he says, “I bet a way can be found to make it work in schools.”

Only two representatives voted against the House joint resolution, in two separate meetings in January.

One was Rep. Jennifer Harris, D-Orlando, who said especially in the lower grades, peer pressure and bullying can be problematic.

“My concern is that there will be students who won’t have the same ability to express themselves – despite the fact that the bill says they can. They already don’t, in many cases, even having protection under the U.S. Constitution.”

The House joint resolution has passed two committees overwhelmingly and is on the Special Order Calendar. The Senate joint resolution (SJR 1104) by Ralph Massullo, Jr., R-Inverness, is in the Senate Education Pre-K – 12 committee, its first stop. 

Yarborough’s SB 1006 is also in the Senate Education Pre-K – 12 committee, while Borrero’s HB 835 is in the Student Academic Success subcommittee. Neither has come up for a vote yet. If one of them passes and is signed into law, it will become effective on July 1, 2026.

The joint resolution requires a three-fifths vote of the membership of both the House and Senate. If approved, it would appear on the 2026 general ballot.

This article first appeared on Florida Trident and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.