A Jewish Florida man looks to South Dakota in bid to overturn Supreme Court ban on school prayer

When the Supreme Court sided with Jewish plaintiffs and others in 1962 in ruling that requiring prayer in school violates the First Amendment, one vocal critic of the decision was Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, head of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement.

Now, a follower of the late rabbi believes he can get today’s Supreme Court, with its conservative supermajority, to overturn that landmark ruling, known as Engel v. Vitale.

Hillel Hellinger, a resident of North Miami Beach, Florida, filed paperwork earlier this month in South Dakota, proposing a ballot measure that, according to its proposed text, would mandate a “daily nondenominational prayer in public schools.” It could appear before voters in 2026.

Public school teachers at all grade levels would be required to begin each day by leading students phrase by phrase in the recitation of the prayer: “Almighty God, who is aware of His creation, who sustains it and judges it, please have mercy on us.” Teachers and parents of students who object on religious grounds would be able to opt-out by submitting a written request to their school’s principal.

Hellinger has cited what he said were high crime rates across the country in explaining his rationale for the measure. He also said prayer can have a positive impact on youth. 

“South Dakota may be a very crime-free state, but most of the country is going through a lot of crime,” he told South Dakota Public Broadcasting. “By children knowing there’s a god in this world it would have an influence on their behavior.” 

Hellinger’s proposal faces a number of obstacles — from the requirement that 17,509 South Dakotans sign a petition supporting it to potential legal challenges to the vote itself. 

It comes as debate over the role of religion in public life has taken center stage ahead of the November election. This year’s Republican Party platform pledges to “champion the First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in school,” and Republican-led states have recently mandated displaying the Ten Commandments or teaching the Bible in public school classrooms. Plaintiffs in states across the country have also challenged abortion restrictions on religious grounds. 

The initiative also follows decades of efforts by Schneerson and his disciples in support of prayer and, later, a moment of silence in public schools. Hellinger’s argument for the ballot measure echoes Schneerson’s original rationale, stated in 1962, that a daily prayer in school “offers in many cases the only opportunity for the children to make some personal ‘contact’ with G‑d every day.”

Hellinger lives a short drive away from The Shul, the Chabad synagogue where, in 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the state’s bill mandating a daily moment of silence in schools. In Arizona, meanwhile, a lawmaker’s conversation with a Chabad rabbi is reportedly what led her to introduce a moment of silence bill in her state that was signed into law in 2022. 

A similar effort failed in South Dakota, where lawmakers killed a bill in 2022 that would have required daily “quiet time” in schools. The bill was backed by the state’s governor, Kristi Noem, according to The Dakota Scout.

But this time, Hellinger told several South Dakota media outlets that he chose the state, some 1,700 miles from his home, because he believed it would be easier to succeed there than in Florida or somewhere else.

“It only needs to be submitted in one state,” Hellinger, who did not respond to a request for comment, told South Dakota Public Broadcasting. “If I were to file it in Florida, I could do the same thing, but I would need over 50 times as many signatures to get it on the ballot.”

Hellinger hopes that the Supreme Court ends up ruling on his prayer — whose language, he said, was inspired by the prayer at the center of the 1962 decision. The Supreme Court has, in recent years, stripped away or weakened judicial doctrines separating church and state in favor of an interpretation that the framers of the Constitution intended to bolster and protect religion, not promote secularism. 

A landmark moment came in 2022, when the court ruled in favor of a Christian high school football coach who lost his job after leading prayers for his team on the field.

But Adam Laats, a professor of education and history at Binghamton University, said he didn’t think the court would overthrow Engel v. Vitale on the basis of Hellinger’s proposed ballot measure.

“So far the current conservative majority has avoided directly injecting devotional practice into school structures,” Laats wrote in an email to JTA. Referring to the football coach case, he added, “In the most relevant case, for instance, Kennedy v. Bremerton, Justice Gorsuch opined that a public-school coach could lead students in prayer, but only because the coach was performing a private act of worship.”

Laats wrote, “The logic was an egregious stretch, in my opinion, but by that principle, this proposed law would not be allowable.”

Hellinger claims that after consulting at least one prominent lawyer, he’s confident that when challenged at the Supreme Court, the measure would likely receive the support of the majority of justices.

“I emailed Alan Dershowitz regarding this issue, and he says that with the present Supreme Court, it’s very likely they would overturn the 1962 ruling and allow for nondenominational prayer in public schools,” Hellinger told South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

Reached for comment, Dershowitz said he couldn’t remember whether he had corresponded with Hellinger, but added that he could not predict how the current Supreme Court would rule on the matter. He also said he supports the ban on mandated prayer in schools as decided in Engel v. Vitale.

“I am strongly against overturning that case, and I’m strongly opposed to prayer in the schools,” Dershowitz said in a phone interview. “Prayer in the school is a terrible idea. It would further divide our country along religious lines.”

It’s not the first time Hellinger has thrust himself into the debate about religion in public life.

When he was a licensed pharmacist in the late 1990s, he sued a pharmacy chain for refusing to hire him, claiming religious discrimination because he told hiring managers that selling condoms went against his faith. The jury ruled against Hellinger, whose pharmacist’s license expired in 2011, according to an official state database of licenses. 

In 2009, he unsuccessfully ran for city council in North Miami Beach and missed several candidate forums because they fell on Shabbat, when traditional Jewish law prohibits work or the use of electricity.

“I am not going to do anything to compromise my religion,” Hellinger said at the time. “And I think people will respect me for that.”