Atheist Groups Decry Supreme Court Ruling Allowing Prayer In Town Meetings

The director of a Madison-based atheist organization says Monday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of local governments to open their meetings with a prayer marks a step towards theocratic government.

The 5-4 ruling comes in a suit filed by two women from the town of Greece, N.Y., one Jewish and the other an atheist. They claimed the town government’s practice of opening meetings with a sectarian prayer violates the constitutional requirement for separation between church and state.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, says the decision puts atheists at a disadvantage and ignores what the Constitution says.

“The framers of our Constitution didn’t even pray during the entire the four months debate adopting the Constitution,” she said. “If they didn’t need to pray over that, then why do city councils need to pray over liquor licenses, sewers and variances? Government isn’t supposed to have religious speech. That’s the whole point.”

Gaylor says the ruling will give religious people more clout than the one-third of the population she says are non-religious.

David Cortman, of the Alliance Defending Freedom that represented the town government in the case, however, says the ruling is a victory for the First Amendment, because it prevents the government from censoring religious speech. He says the plaintiffs in the case were asking for something they knew they couldn’t get.

“What they were asking for is that all prayer to be prohibited, but they know that even now that’s such an extreme request that they try to phrase it in a way to say, ‘Well, we just want non-sectarian prayer,’” he said. “The problem is there’s no such thing as a secular prayer.”

Cortman says his group will launch an education campaign about the ruling to reassure local governments that prayers at public meetings are a legal activity.