4th US Circuit strikes down sectarian prayer at County Board meetings with help of Obama nominee

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Media report

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners was wrong to allow opening prayers at its meetings that singled out praise for a specific deity.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled 2-1 on Friday in favor of a couple who sued after the prayer before a December 2007 meeting thanked God for allowing the birth of his son to forgive us for our sins and closed by making the prayer in the name of Jesus.

http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/jul/29/3/federal-appeals-court-rejects-forsyth-countys-sect-ar-1252157/


Background

On December 17, 2007, Janet Joyner and Constance Lynn Blackmon decided to attend a meeting of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners. Like all public Board meetings, the gathering began with an invocation delivered by a local religious leader. And like almost every previous invocation, that prayer closed with the phrase, "For we do make this prayer in Your Son Jesus’ name, Amen." The December 17 prayer also made a number of references to specific tenets of Christianity, from "the Cross of Calvary" to the "Virgin Birth" to the "Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."

In response, Joyner and Blackmon filed suit against the county, alleging that the December 17 prayer represented one instance of the Board’s broader practice of sponsoring sectarian opening prayers at its meetings. After conducting a thorough review of the factual record, the district court concluded that the Board’s legislative prayer policy did in fact violate the Establishment Clause by advancing and endorsing Christianity to the exclusion of other faiths.

Majority

The district court’s ruling accords with both Supreme Court precedent and our own. Those cases establish that in order to survive constitutional scrutiny, invocations must consist of the type of nonsectarian prayers that solemnize the legislative task and seek to unite rather than divide. Sectarian prayers must not serve as the gateway to citizen participation in the affairs of local government. To have them do so runs afoul of the promise of public neutrality among faiths that resides at the heart of the First Amendment’s religion clauses.

Judge Wilkinson (Nominated by Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984) wrote the majority opinion, in which Judge Keenan (Nominated by Barack Obama on September 14, 2009) joined. Judge Niemeyer (Nominated by George H.W. Bush on May 11, 1990) wrote a dissenting opinion.

http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/101232.P.pdf