A pair of Alabama lawmakers plan to sponsor legislation guaranteeing public school students – and their teachers – the right to pray in school.

The sponsors, state Rep. Steve McMillan, R-Gulf Shores, and Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, contend the bill would clarify a right Americans already have. But a lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said laws allowing teachers and other employees to join religious activities with their students are legally problematic.

McMillan said the bill addresses prior court rulings restricting the ability of people to pray in school.

"We believe it will restore the rights of children to have voluntary religious activities in school," he said.

Dial said a judge in DeKalb County struck down a similar law he sponsored years ago. This is an attempt to address that in a way that will pass constitutional muster, he said. He added that the Foundation for Moral Law, founded by Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, has agreed to defend the state free of charge in the event of legal challenges.

Dial has tried on multiple occasions, most recently this past legislative session, to pass a bill authorizing the display of the Ten Commandments in schools and other public buildings.

The McMillan-Dial bill spells out a number of student-initiated activities that are expressly protected, including praying, expressing religious beliefs, distributing religious literature, organizing prayer groups and expressing religious views in homework assignments.

The bill contains language allowing schools to prohibit religious behavior that infringes on schools' ability to maintain discipline or that harasses other people. In addition, the bill would allow school systems to set up formal grievance hearings for students or parents who believe their rights have been violated. The law also would allow for an appeal to the school board.

If school systems do not set up a formal grievance process, students and parents would have the right to make their case directly to the principal, and then the superintendent and school board. Parents also could file a lawsuit in circuit court.

But this paragraph contained in a draft version of the bill might cause legal problems, according to opponents of public school prayer:

"A local board of education may not prohibit school personnel from participating in religious activities on school grounds that are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the instructional day so long as such activities are voluntary for all parties and do not conflict with the responsibilities or assignments of such personnel."

A similar law that passed this year in North Carolina prompted Americans United for Separation of Church and State to send a letter to every school system in the Tar Heel state to warn them that allowing teachers to pray with students would be unconstitutional.

Gregory Lipper, senior litigation counsel for the organization, said the courts have ruled that teachers cannot participate. He said religious activities among students become less than voluntary when they see people in positions of authority taking part.

"It creates an undue pressure on students to join in," he said.

But Dial, the Alabama bill's co-sponsor, said barring teachers from praying would trigger a separate constitutional problem.

"How are you going to deny a teacher, and tell them they can't pray?" he said. "You're violating their constitutional rights."

Lipper pointed to a 2008 case in which the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a football coach in New Jersey violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by kneeling and bowing his head as his players prayed before games and pre-game meals.

Attempts to get around a 1962 U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning prayer in public school are nothing new in Alabama. In the most recent legislative session earlier this year, for instance, the Legislature attracted national attention when it debated a bill to require teachers to spend 15 minutes during the first class of the day reading the opening prayers delivered in Congress.

The Alabama House of Representatives also passed a bill earlier this year that would allow the display of the Ten Commandments in schools and other public buildings. But it did not get through the Senate.

Last year, the Freedom from Religion Foundation threatened legal action against the Cullman County school system over a "prayer " taking leaders to each school to say a 10- to 15-minute prayer.caravan

Students and some Alabama students on Wednesday participated in "See You at the Pole," a national event involving prayers around the flagpole on campus.