At the start of the Birdville Independent School District school
board meeting in Haltom City, Texas, a young public school student
prays for the proceedings, stating, “All of us students are lucky to be a
part of this district, and I ask God to bless you.” While the student
speaks into the microphone that is used by constituents and set at his
level in front of the podium, the school board members post a
disclaimer on the screen behind them and in front of the gathered
assembly of meeting attendees that states: “The content of the speaker’s
message is the private expression of the individual student.” This
student is part of a longstanding tradition of the district’s merit-based
selection of elementary and middle school students to deliver an
invocation prior to the start of school board meetings—an invocation
practice that was upheld as constitutional by the Fifth Circuit in
American Humanist Ass’n v. McCarty.