by Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
Posted on May 5, 2014 at 9:13 AM
Updated today at 9:13 AM
WASHINGTON
-- The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the centuries-old tradition of
offering prayers at the start of government meetings, even if those
prayers are overwhelmingly Christian.
The 5-4 decision in favor of
the any-prayer-goes policy in the town of Greece, N.Y., avoided two
alternatives that the justices clearly found abhorrent: having
government leaders parse prayers for sectarian content, or outlawing
them altogether.
It was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, with
the court's conservatives agreeing and its liberals, led by Justice
Elena Kagan, dissenting.
The long-awaited ruling following oral
arguments in November was a victory for the the town, which was taken to
court by two women who argued that a plethora of overtly Christian
prayers at town board meetings violated their rights.
While the
court had upheld the practice of legislative prayer, most recently in a
1983 case involving the Nebraska legislature, the case of Town of Greece
v. Galloway presented the justices with a new twist: mostly Christian
clergy delivering frequently sectarian prayers before an audience that
often includes average citizens with business to conduct.
The
court's ruling said that the alternative -- having the town board act as
supervisors and censors of religious speech -- would involve the
government far more than Greece was doing by inviting any clergy to
deliver the prayers.
"An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical
prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition
of legislative prayer outlined in the court's cases," Kennedy said.
Kagan,
joined by the court's other three liberal justices, said the town's
prayers differed from those delivered to legislators about to undertake
the people's business. In Greece, she said, sectarian prayers were
delivered to "ordinary citizens," and their participation was
encouraged.
"No one can fairly read the prayers from Greece's town
meetings as anything other than explicitly Christian -- constantly and
exclusively so," Kagan said. "The prayers betray no understanding that
the American community is today, as it long has been, a rich mosaic of
religious faiths."
The legal tussle began in 2007, following eight
years of nothing but Christian prayers in the town of nearly 100,000
people outside Rochester. Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens, a Jew and
an atheist, took the board to federal court and won by contending that
its prayers – often spiced with references to Jesus, Christ and the Holy
Spirit -- aligned the town with one religion.
Once the legal
battle was joined, town officials canvassed widely for volunteer
prayer-givers and added a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and a member
of the Baha'i faith to the mix. Stephens, meanwhile, awoke one morning
to find her mailbox on top of her car, and part of a fire hydrant turned
up in her swimming pool.
The two women contended that the prayers
in Greece were unconstitutional because they pressured those in
attendance to participate. They noted that unlike federal and state
government sessions, town board meetings are frequented by residents who
must appear for everything from business permits to zoning changes.
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