NYT: USSC Won't Hear Military-College Dinner-Prayer Appeal

[DeepModem Mom]

Justices Won't Hear Military-College Appeal on Dinner Prayer
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Published: April 27, 2004


WASHINGTON, April 26 — The Supreme Court refused on Monday to consider an appeal by the State of Virginia to permit the state-sponsored Virginia Military Institute to return to the practice of dinner-hour prayers. Two lower federal courts had declared the cadet-led prayers unconstitutional.

Only Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist — two short of the necessary four justices — voted to hear the appeal. The court's announcement came after the court debated the case internally for more than two months.

According to the court's public docket, the justices had taken up the case at their private weekly conference on eight occasions since February, a fact that makes it likely that they had considerably more to say than they revealed in the brief opinions they finally published on Monday: Justice Scalia's seven-page dissent and Justice John Paul Stevens's four-page explanation of why the court chose not to grant the appeal....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/politics/27SCOT.html