The most recent meeting of the Chino Valley Unified school board was notable for what it didn’t feature: prayer.

Earlier in the day Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal had told the board to drop their long habit of “reciting prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing at board meetings.”

The school board has been opening its meetings with religious invocations since November 2013.

The judge’s ruling came out of a lawsuit filed by several plaintiffs, including Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Bernal said the school board had violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights.

Chino Valley Unified’s attorneys from Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute, a nonprofit conservative legal defense organization that specializes in religious freedom, could not be reached for comment Friday.

It’s unclear whether the district will appeal Bernal’s ruling.

The board will make that decision within the next 30 days, district spokeswoman Julie Gobin said by email Friday.

“Beginning last evening, there was/will not be an invocation,” she wrote.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation hailed Bernal’s ruling as “a welcome reaffirmation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state,” foundation staff attorney Andrew Seidel said in a press release issued Friday.

The foundation sued the school district in November 2014, saying that “the meetings resemble a church service more than a school board meeting.”

Anonymous district residents, including children, are also among the plaintiffs.

“There is no secular or educational purpose for the Bible readings or proselytizing,” their complaint reads in part. “These customs and practices have the principal and primary purpose of advancing a particular religious preference and religion over nonreligion.”

On Thursday, Bernal agreed: “The court declares that the resolution permitting religious prayer in board meetings, and the policy and custom of reciting prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing at board meetings, constitute unconstitutional endorsements of religion in violation of plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights,” Bernal wrote.

The ruling legally prevents board members Andrew Cruz, Irene Hernandez-Blair, James Na and Sylvia Orozco from “conducting, permitting or otherwise endorsing school-sponsored prayer in board meetings.”

Na is an active member of the Watchmen Ministry at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, according to a biography on the district website. Board President Cruz is also a church member there, according to his biography.

The 8,000-member mega-church made headlines in 2013 for its unsuccessful opposition to AB 1266, which granted students access to programs and facilities based on the gender they identify as, rather than the sex they were born into. The law opened the door for transgender students to use bathrooms or locker rooms based on their gender identity or to play sports alongside the gender with which they identify.

The church has cheered Na’s advocacy of church-friendly views on the board.

“Our own James Na, Chino Unified school board member, successfully spearheaded a campaign to reintroduce the Bible back into the public schools as history and literature,” a June 2010 post on the church’s Facebook page reads in part.

At Thursday’s school board meeting, Na referred inquiries to Gobin.

At that same meeting, parent Naomi Minogue of Concerned Parents and Citizens of CVUSD — a group of parents opposed to the current board majority — warned board members that their group is actively recruiting candidates to run in this November’s election. Na, Cruz and Blair are all up for re-election this year.

While the lawsuit was filed in 2014, she and her colleagues reached their “last straw” in 2015.

“It all started at the July 16 school board meeting, where now-President Andrew Cruz made a 12-minute speech about his own personal religious beliefs,” Minogue said Friday.

Members of her group have repeatedly called on Cruz to resign. She applauded Bernal’s decision.

“I’m hopeful that this will be the end of it. I’m so sad and disappointed that it even went this far,” she said. “Even if the lawsuit is dropped, we aren’t going to stay with status quo anymore. We are actively pursuing change for the school board.”

Chino Valley Unified serves 29,314 students.

Staff writer David Allen contributed to this report.