Constitutional Law

Virginia City Council Policy Against Sectarian Prayer Upheld By Appeals Court

A federal appeals court has rejected a Virginia town council member’s First Amendment challenge of city council policy requiring only nondenominational prayers at council meetings.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court Appeals ruled July 23 that the Fredericksburg city council’s policy of allowing only nondenominational prayer did not violate the free-speech or religious liberty rights of Hashmel Turner.

Turner, a councilman and an ordained minister and part-time pastor of First Baptist Church of Love, had frequently closed his council prayers in the name of Jesus Christ. In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the city if Turner kept offering sectarian prayer at council gatherings. Subsequently, the city council, on the advice of its attorney, implemented a policy of allowing only nondenominational prayers at its meetings.

In late November, when it was Turner’s time to offer a council prayer, he was asked by the mayor if he planned to close his prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Turner said he would, prompting the mayor to ask another council member to deliver the prayer. Turner, represented by the Rutherford Institute, sued the city, arguing that its prayer policy violated his free speech and religious liberty rights.  

The Fourth Circuit, however, upheld a lower federal court’s conclusion that the city council’s prayer policy did not violate Turner’s rights.

“The restriction that prayers be nonsectarian in nature is designed to make the prayers accessible to people who come from a variety of backgrounds, not to exclude or disparage a particular faith,” wrote retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who participated in the case as a visiting judge.

O’Connor concluded for the court in Turner v. City Council, “Turner was not forced to offer a prayer that violated his deeply held religious beliefs. Instead, he was given the chance to pray on behalf of the government. Turner was unwilling to do so in the manner that the government had proscribed, but remains free to pray on his own behalf, in nongovernmental endeavors, in the manner dictated by his conscience.”

The Rutherford Institute announced that it would appeal the Fourth Circuit’s ruling.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on July 24, 2008 (boomark / email).