Prayers in Public - Supreme Court will Hear Church to State Case

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether a town in New York endorsed religion by allowing members of the public to open meetings with a prayer.

#Two residents sued Greece, New York, in 2008, saying it was endorsing Christianity, a violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of separation of church and state.

#Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens said the vast majority of prayer-givers since the practice started in 1999 were Christian clergy. Attendees would often be asked to join in or bow their heads.

#The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York revived the case by ruling against the town after a district court threw out the lawsuit.

#Although the town did in theory allow anyone to volunteer, it "neither publicly solicited volunteers to invocation nor informed members of the general public that volunteers would be considered or accepted," the appeals court said.

#The town also failed to make it clear the prayer was intended to signify the solemnity of the proceedings, which the Supreme Court has said is not unconstitutional, rather than "to affiliate the town with any particular creed," it said.

#Lawyers for the town say the Supreme Court has long allowed legislative sessions to begin with a prayer. They also note that the town has never regulated the content of prayers and did not discriminate in selecting prayer-givers.

#In Albany, the city and county commissions both start their regular meetings with prayers either prayed by commission members or by clergy asked to pray. The majority, like the religious makeup of the region, are Christian, however rabbis from the local synagogue have also been asked to pray, as have local imams.

#City Attorney Nathan Davis said that merely opening a meeting with a prayer doesn't violate the first amendment.

#"I don't think that we have a constitutional issue with what we do," Davis said. "There are two parts of the amendment that deal with religion, you can't prohibit nor can you establish religion and what we do does neither."

#Tommy Coleman, the attorney for the Dougherty County School Board, said that things are a little different for boards of education.

#"The issue has never risen to the Supreme Court level before, but the appellate courts have ruled that there is a distinction between legislative bodies like Congress, general assemblies and school boards, generally," Coleman said. "They allow the prayer in city and county meetings because they're not educational in nature."

#A total of 18 states and 49 members of the U.S. House of Representatives joined briefs asking the court to take the case.

#Oral arguments and a decision are expected in the court's next term, which begins in October and ends in June 2014.

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