The US Supreme Court has voted 5-4 to uphold prayer at public meetings.

The case stemmed from the town of Greece, New York (details here) and their practice of having a brief prayer before each town council meeting.

The majority cited precedent which stated that because prayer before government meetings has been a tradition since before the Revolution it was acceptable. The dissent wanted to reverse those prior rulings.

Writing for the majority Justice Kennedy said

“Government may not mandate a civic religion that stifles any but the most generic reference to the sacred any more than it may prescribe a religious orthodoxy. The Congress that drafted the First Amendment would have been accustomed to invocations containing explicitly religious themes of the sort respondents find objectionable.”

He also was concerned that putting limits on public prayer would make the government more involved in religion.

“To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, a rule that would involve government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town’s current practice of neither editing or approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact”

The dissenters did not seem to be so much upset about the general principle of prayer at public meetings than the way this policy was enacted.

Justice Kagan wrote

“Month in and month out for over a decade, prayers steeped in only one faith, addressed toward members of the public, commenced meetings to discuss local affairs and distribute government benefits. In my view, that practice does not square with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share in her government,”

She also expressed concern about the impact of prayer at public meetings being of one faith and the fact it could have negative impact or put pressure on people who were asking the government for a zoning permit.

Justice Breyer also focused on the fact that the prayers were of one faith and suggested that they could follow the example of Congress in offering more neutral and diverse prayers.

prayer graphic as thumbnail on front page via shutterstock.com