A five-year-old girl in Florida was rebuked by a lunchroom worker for praying in her elementary school cafeteria before her meal, it was reported in April.
Marcos Perez, the child’s father, has hired lawyers to demand, as stated in a letter to the school, that they stop ‘engaging in such religious discrimination’. The letter from the Liberty Institute Lawyers explains that the child bowed her head in prayer, but was told by a lunchroom supervisor to stop.
The girl said: ‘But it’s good to pray’, to which the supervisor responded: ‘It is not good’. When the girl tried again to bow her head and pray silently, she was stopped again.
Violating law?
The Liberty Institute argue that the Carillon Elementary School is violating state and federal law. The letter states that they expect the school district to apologise to the Perez family and the community as well as take steps to ensure this ‘does not happen again’.
Since the exchange in the cafeteria the Perez family has started home schooling. Perez said: ‘We have exercised our option as parents to teach our daughter at home. We live in a very good school district, but we cannot, in good conscience, send our daughter to a school where her religious liberty has been compromised’.
