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Court OK's Sectarian City Council Invocations

By Howard M. Friedman

A New York federal district court this week rejected an Establishment Clause challenge to sectarian prayers offered at Town Board meetings in Greece, New York.  In Galloway v. Town of Greece, (WD NY, Aug. 5, 2010), the court, in an 83-page decision, upheld the town's policy of inviting clergy from all denominations in the town to offer an invocation, without any guidance or restriction on the content of their prayer. That policy led to almost all of the prayers being delivered by Christian clergy. The court wrote in part:

[T]he Court has considered the nature of the prayers, and finds that they did not proselytize or advance any one, or disparage any other, faith or belief. It is undisputed that the vast majority of prayers at issue in this case were offered by Christian clergy, and that many of them contained at least one reference to Jesus Christ.... Otherwise, though, most of the prayers that Plaintiffs maintain are sectarian are indistinguishable from prayers that they say are non-sectarian....

Plaintiffs maintain ... that sectarian legislative prayers necessarily violate the Establishment Clause.... Plaintiffs contend that prayers may only refer to a "generic God," and must not refer to any particular deity or to any religious belief, such as the Holy Trinity, that is specific to a particular religion or group of religions. Plaintiff's further maintain that to prevent sectarian prayer, the Town must instruct potential prayer-givers to give inclusive ecumenical prayers. The Court disagrees.

It is clear to this Court that Marsh [v. Chambers] does not require that legislative prayer be non-sectarian. To the contrary, Marsh upheld the constitutionality of legislative prayer, thereby specifically carving out a unique exception to the Lemon test, based primarily if not exclusively on the long history of legislative prayer in Congress, which is often overtly sectarian....

The Court also disagrees with Plaintiffs' contention that the Town must, or even can, instruct potential prayer-givers that prayers should be "inclusive and ecumenical." In Lee [v. Weisman], the Supreme Court characterized the defendant school's similar instruction to an invited rabbi as an impermissible attempt by government to control the content of prayer.... The Court finds that the policy requested by Plaintiffs would violate Lee, since it would likewise impose a state-created orthodoxy. In this regard, the Court respectfully disagrees with the Fourth Circuit's decision in Turner [v. City Council of the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia].

Moreover, the Court finds that Plaintiff's proposed non-sectarian policy, which would require Town officials to differentiate between sectarian prayers and non-sectarian prayers, is vague and unworkable, as Pelphrey [v. Cobb County, GA] demonstrates. The instant case illustrates the illusory nature of so-called nonsectarian prayer, since as shown above, many of the prayers that Plaintiffs say are sectarian are indistinguishable from prayers that they say are not.

Alliance Defense Fund issued a press release on the decision. (See prior related posting.)

Full post as published by Religion Clause on August 07, 2010 (boomark / email).