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Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on Wednesday rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow prayer in public schools.

(David Goldman, Associated Press)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Attorney General Mike DeWine on Wednesday rejected petitions from a group proposing a constitutional amendment giving Ohio children the right to pray in public schools and requiring schools to display the U.S. Bill of Rights.

The Coalition to Return Prayer to Our Public Schools turned in 1,402 signatures to DeWine's office, 402 more than needed at this stage. DeWine's job is to certify whether the summary that will appear on future petitions is a fair and truthful summary of the proposed amendment.

But DeWine didn't even get that far; the group's submission contained only the summary and lacked the actual proposed amendment language DeWine's office compares the summary to.

"This deficiency is a fatal error that requires me to reject the submission," DeWine wrote in a letter to the group.

The group made the same error and a few others in a 2013 submission for the same proposed amendment.

Henry Johnson III of the Coalition to Return Prayer to Our Public Schools said the group plans to resubmit the language in the future but does not have a target election date.

Johnson, senior pastor at Union Grove Baptist Church in Columbus, said the amendment was intended to give Christians the right to pray in schools. But he said it would not prohibit people of other faiths from praying "their way."

"When I was coming up, it was quite different than what it is today," Johnson told cleveland.com. "We didn't have a problem of having prayer in school. We didn't have a problem with having Christmas plays and Easter plays. We feel like as Christians, our rights are being deprived"

The summary says the amendment would express:

That the right of Ohio citizens to express their religious beliefs shall not be infringed upon.

That school children have the right to pray and/or acknowledge their religious beliefs voluntarily in their schools.

That all public schools shall display the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The attorney general's certification is the first step in a long, often expensive process to put a constitutional amendment before voters. If approved by DeWine, the bipartisan Ohio Ballot Board then decides whether the amendment should be one issue or multiple issues on the ballot.

After that step, petitioners can start collecting the 305,591 signatures of registered Ohio voters needed to qualify the measure for the ballot.