(AgapePress) - A public high school in Ohio has stopped opening the school day with a prayer after a newspaper questioned whether the practice was constitutional.

Until last week, the Lord's Prayer was recited over the public address system at Ohio's Mineral Ridge High School before the Pledge of Allegiance and morning announcements. The Warren Tribune Chronicle had questioned Weathersfield Local School District officials about whether the prayer violates the so-called "separation of church and state." In 1962 the Supreme Court ruled that a public school in New York had violated the First Amendment by reciting a prayer at the beginning of every school day.

Liberty Counsel is a Florida-based legal group that defends the religious freedom rights of Christian students. LC president and general counsel Mat Staver says he believes there is a distinction between what the Supreme Court has said on the issue and what the U.S. Constitution actually means.

Mat Staver

"Obviously they've been having the Lord's Prayer in Ohio in this school for many years," notes Staver, "and it hasn't tended toward the establishment of religion; it hasn't harmed anyone." The attorney acknowledges that under the current interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the practice of reciting the Lord's Prayer over the intercom likely is unconstitutional. "[But] on the other hand," he adds, "that's clearly not the intent or purpose of the Constitution itself."

Superintendent Mike Hanshaw says none of the 300 students at Mineral Ridge High School was required to say the prayer -- and none had complained. But he says "we're now in compliance with the law." The Liberty Counsel attorney says he wishes Mineral Ridge would have kept the prayer instead of caving in to the newspaper's criticism.

"After the school got the complaint from the paper -- especially since no parent or student ever complained -- [I would have suggested that the] school would first deliberate about this and contact organizations such as Liberty Counsel or AFA Center for Law and Policy, as an example, and get some legal guidance," the attorney says.

Acquiescing to the newspaper and "giving up the fight without even knowing the alternatives is certainly premature," he adds. According to Staver, under the Supreme Court ruling not all school prayer is impermissible. In fact, he says, a moment of silence before the school day or students praying together in their Bible clubs is constitutional.