Supreme Court lets stand ruling that bans prayer at school board meetings

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected appeals that sought to give government organizations more discretion on whether to open their meetings with prayers.

Instead, the court decided to let a federal appeals court decision stand that said a North Carolina school board would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by starting its meetings with prayers.

The Establishment Clause says the government can make no laws respecting an establishment of religion. In other words, it requires a separation of church and state.

The North Carolina school board also allowed most of the prayers to be Christian in nature, which some critics say is discriminatory against other denominations.

The North Carolina case was lumped in with a Delaware ruling that also prohibited prayers at school board meetings.

The case of Forsyth County v. Joyner was the first time the Supreme Court has handled a case involving the constitutionality of prayer at government meetings since 1983. The court’s decision to let the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision stand was unusual only because the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts generally has been tolerant of religion in other cases.

The 1983 ruling said government meetings could begin with prayers only if they were non-denominational and they were led by a government-employed chaplain.

An example is the opening prayers for daily sessions of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. They consist of non-denominational prayers delivered by a chaplain or guest clergyman.

However, the Forsyth County school board case is different, the Fourth Circuit said.

The Forsyth County, NC, board of commissioners allowed religious leaders from a variety of local churches to sign up to deliver the opening prayers. Nearly all of them came from Christian faiths.

Nearly 80 percent of the invocations referred to Jesus in a sample 18-month period studied by the appeals court, which is based in Richmond, VA.

“Invocations must consist of the type of nonsectarian prayers that solemnize the legislative task and seek to unite rather than divide,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote for the majority in the Fourth Circuit’s ruling. “Sectarian prayers must not serve as the gateway to citizen participation in the affairs of local government.”

Attorneys for Forsyth County argued that the ruling will require government to review the content of prayers to eliminate any references intrinsic to a specific denomination. The county includes the city of Winston-Salem, NC.

“The invocation policy of Forsyth County informed the audience of the purpose of the invocations, permitted the invocations to be presented by private citizens rather than a paid government employee and opened the opportunity to members of all faith traditions,” the county said in defense of its school board prayers.

The dispute arose when two women who attended a school board meeting in 2007 decided to challenge the right of board members to public prayer.

Prayer in schools and government meetings often has pitted state institutions against federal courts.

In another example, an Indiana state senator recently introduced a bill that would allow public schools to open each day with the Lord’s Prayer.

The bill introduced by Sen. Jim Tomes would give the option to students to recite the prayer.

Tomes said he knew the bill was unlikely to pass in the state legislature but he wanted to raise the issue for discussion.

The Supreme Court docket number for Forsyth County v. Joyner is 11-546.

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