A number of residents and students protested at the offices of the Ector County (Texas) Independent School District after officials said they would be making prayer in the graduation ceremony optional.

High school students in the district had voted to have prayer as part of the ceremony but the administrators completely ignored their wishes in scheduling an “opening” and “closing” delivered by students instead of an invocation and benediction.  The students would not be chosen by the graduating seniors or by academic achievement but entirely by random selection.

The move came because the anti-Christian group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State threatened to sue the school if they allowed the students to follow through on their vote to have a prayer included in the event.

Students held up signs saying “We are a democracy; we voted to pray” and “As Americans, we have the freedom to pray.”

School board member Doyle Woodall said that the board did not want to take the action they did but that it was forced upon them by anti-Christianists using the courts to force their will on the majority.