Mississippi public school district fined $7,500 for opening assembly with a prayer

Brandon High School where the assembly took place   (c)CityofBrandon

A U.S. Federal District Court has fined the third largest public school district in Mississippi a sum of $7,500 after a minister opened up an assembly with a prayer, an act that violated a 2013 court settlement that ordered the district to stop “proselytizing Christianity”.
The assembly was designated to honour all of the district's students who scored higher than a 22 on their ACT college tests. The court ordered the district to pay a student plaintiff from Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, who was represented by the American Humanist Association, $2,500 because the student attended a school assembly that began with a prayer. An additional $5,000 was ordered to be paid the student because the lawsuit revealed that a religious group was permitted to hand out Bibles to fifth graders at a public school in October 2014.
The school district first came under legal fire when the same Northwest Rankin High student took the school district and the school's then-principal, Charles Frazier, to court in 2013 for forcing him to attend a series of assemblies that promoted Christianity.