Editorial: School chaplains law crosses a sacred line in Florida

As he signed the school chaplains bill— another one he should have vetoed — Gov. Ron DeSantis said something that underscored how totally wrong it is.

“There are some students,” he said, who “need soul prep.”

That's not a legitimate mission for Florida’s public schools, which at least have the authority to reject it, and should.

It is a crass violation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state as well as of an explicit provision in Florida’s Declaration of Rights, part of the state Constitution.

Taking after Texas, again

Florida becomes the second state to follow Texas down this rathole.

It's as wrong to throw public school doors open to “volunteer” religious proselytizers as if the state were paying teachers to convert students or drill them for their first communions and Bat Mitzvahs.

Children who want religious activity at school are free to organize it on their own time. But the state must keep hands off and keep outsiders out.

“Soul prep” belongs with their families and whatever churches, synagogues and mosques they choose to attend or not.

That’s the American way. It has been so ever since the First Congress adopted James Madison’s Bill of Rights.

More political pressure

With this extremely misguided new law, House Bill 931, the Legislature and DeSantis have created a drastic situation for Florida school boards and students. The boards will be under relentless pressure to allow chaplains in their schools.

The children’s peers will badger them to get the required parental consent to participate in whatever chaplains have in store for them, and that means trouble.

By the March 1 voting deadline Texas legislators had set, all 25 of that state’s largest school districts had rejected chaplaincies. So had an unknown number of smaller ones.

All of Florida’s school boards should say no, as firmly and as soon as possible.

Unlike the Texas law, the invitation is open-ended.

It falls to the school boards now to find the courage, conscience and respect for the Constitution that so shamefully eluded the governor and the 25 senators and 89 House members— all but four of them Republican — who voted for the bill.

Whether they admit it or not, they were fronting for the Christian nationalism movement that means to make the United States into a fundamentalist theocracy. Mainstream religious organizations actively oppose that, just as many pastors opposed this law.

No relevant qualifications for chaplains are required under the law. Florida sponsors scarcely pretended that it would be about anything but religion. Nothing in the bill requires proof of training, qualification or certification other than a clean background check.

It is a pathetic chaplaincy program indeed in which someone ordained through a fly-by-night internet "church" could be considered overqualified.

More lawsuits are coming

HB 931 also extends DeSantis’ string of creating more prosperity for Florida’s legal profession. Lots of litigation lies ahead.

For a Harvard-educated lawyer, DeSantis showed a striking ignorance of the law’s facial unconstitutionality. He said it’s not a problem because of the parental consent requirement. But the Constitution of the United States has never been subject to parental consent.

The governor also made light of the announced intention of the Satanic Temple, which opposed the bill, to send its agents into the schools.

DeSantis says its chaplains won’t be allowed because “that is not a religion.”

That’s not for him to say. Or for school boards either. It’s not the government’s business to say what is a religion and what isn’t, except in as much as the IRS grants religious organizations tax-exempt status — a status granted to the satanists in 2019.

Florida’s Declaration of Rights, more specific than the federal constitution, adds that “No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

A discredit to the state

The fiction underlying Florida’s vouchers for private religious schools turns on them being privately funded by tax credits. But taxes pay directly for the public and charter schools that are now to be stalking grounds for religious proselytizers.

“Introducing religious leaders into official school positions to serve students in schools will cause division among student bodies that are made up of many religions and nonreligious students,” warned an open letter signed nationally by more than 200 chaplains and 38 organizations.

HB 931 discredits all the legislators who supported it.

They include Rep. Rick Roth, R-West Palm Beach, who was a co-sponsor; Rep. Chip LaMarca of Lighthouse Point; and every other Republican member of the House and Senate.

Nearly all Democrats opposed it. The four who voted yes included Lisa Dunkley of Sunrise and Tom Keen of Orlando. Five Democrats and one Republican didn’t vote.

Everyone involved will be term-limited out of Tallahassee before the harmful effects of HB 931 play out. It should be repealed at the first opportunity, which won’t be soon considering what Florida’s Legislature has become.

Now, it’s up to Florida’s school boards to have the political courage and respect for the Constitution that was so lacking in the Legislature.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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