Legislator wants to ensure religious rights

A conservative Utah senator who last year challenged evolution lessons in public schools is working up a bill to ensure people's religious freedom "without government interference."

Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, said the bill would include the First Amendment's freedom of religion clause and aim to allow students to have Bible groups in public schools and religious celebrations and Ten Commandments displays on government property.

He provided few details Wednesday, saying his bill will be made public in early December.

"States have become hostile of religion," Buttars said, and schools and government leaders are afraid to allow for religious expression.

He said courts are inappropriately making laws regarding the issue — he calls that "a judicial activism house of cards" — and that it's time for a state statute to clarify the matter.

"What (the bill is) going to do is put legislation on the books that says you can ... have religious expression anywhere in the country and have government protect it, not fight it," Buttars said.

The Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said it was too early to comment on Buttars' proposal. But legal director Margaret Plane said the group defends the First Amendment and is "absolutely in favor of freedom of religion."

The federal courts often are asked to clarify the First Amendment via lawsuits.

Student-initiated prayer and non-disruptive religious practice in schools have been upheld. Students nationally are gathering for Bible groups, using open classrooms to pray during Muslim Ramadan observances, passing out religious pamphlets to peers, praying as teams before games and gathering near flagpoles for morning prayer, said Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Virginia, whose Three R's (rights, responsibility, respect) Project is operating in several Utah schools.

The U.S. Department of Education in 2003 distributed constitutional guidelines for prayer in school as part of the No Child Left Behind mandate. It follows an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, Haynes said, which basically allows student-initiated, spontaneous prayer, free of school administration control, at graduation, assemblies and events.