On The Front Lines
Rutherford Institute Weighs in on Staunton City Council Dispute Over Invocations, Points to Legal Precedent Upholding Non-Sectarian Prayers
STAUNTON, Virginia — The Rutherford Institute has been asked to weigh in on the legality of opening legislative meetings with non-sectarian prayers in anticipation of the Staunton City Council’s decision to re-examine its policy of opening meetings with an invocation. In providing Council members with a legal analysis of the controlling precedents that govern their current invocation practice, Rutherford Institute attorneys have concluded that the Staunton City Council’s practice of legislative prayer is lawful and in keeping with rulings handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Institute has been at the forefront of protecting religious liberty for over three decades and has assisted local legislative bodies, their members and their constituents deal with misconceptions about the separation of church and state.
“Prayers before legislative bodies are as old as the republic and were authorized by those who wrote the Constitution,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Based on the information we have received about the Staunton City Council’s practice of invocations which mention no Deity more specific than God, we see no conceivable legal reason for the Council to modify its current practice in any way.”
The City Council for Staunton, Virginia, has had a longstanding tradition of beginning its meetings with an opening prayer that is non-sectarian in nature. However, after disagreement arose over a February 28 council meeting that opened with a moment of silence in lieu of a nonsectarian prayer, council members informally agreed to put the matter to a vote during their March 28 business meeting. Asked to weigh in on the matter, Rutherford Institute attorneys provided the City Council with a legal analysis that clearly shows non-sectarian, legislative prayers to be constitutional.
For example, the United States Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of legislative prayers in a 1983 case, Marsh v. Chambers, when a member of the Nebraska Legislature challenged the state’s practice of paying a chaplain to open each of its sessions with prayer. In affirming the practice of legislative prayer as constitutional, the Court noted that “the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not, in these circumstances, an ‘establishment’ of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.”
Since the Court’s landmark decision in Marsh v. Chambers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has considered the constitutionality of municipalities’ invocation practices in a handful of cases. In Wynne v. Town of Great Falls, South Carolina, the Fourth Circuit concluded that the Town Council had transgressed the line between permissible invocations and impermissible proselytization of a single faith, because the prayers at issue “frequently” contained references to Jesus Christ. The next year, the Fourth Circuit ruled in Simpson v. Chesterfield County Bd. of Supervisors that the Board’s policy of inviting religious leaders from congregations within the County to offer “non-sectarian” invocations at its meetings did not cross the constitutional “line” that had been demarcated in Marsh. Three years later, in Turner v. City Council of City of Fredericksburg, the Fourth Circuit rejected an individual Council member’s First Amendment challenge to a City Council invocation policy requiring invocations offered by Council members to be nondenominational. Finally, in Joyner v. Forsyth County, North Carolina, the Fourth Circuit struck down the invocation practice of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, given that the invocation was routinely a Christian prayer that typically included a reference to Jesus Christ.
Case History
