Justices Take Case on Prayer at Town Board Meetings

Source: new york times

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide cases concerning prayers at the start of town meetings and a patent dispute over heart monitors. It also issued an important administrative law decision that said the Federal Communications Commission was entitled to deference in determining the scope of its own jurisdiction.

Legislative Prayer

The case concerning prayers, Town of Greece v. Galloway, No. 12-696, came from Greece, a town near Rochester. For more than a decade starting in 1999, the town board began its public meetings with a prayer from a “chaplain of the month.” Town officials said that members of all faiths and atheists were welcome to give the opening prayer.

In practice, the federal appeals court in New York said, almost all of the chaplains were Christian.

“A substantial majority of the prayers in the record contained uniquely Christian language,” Judge Guido Calabresi wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. “Roughly two-thirds contained references to ‘Jesus Christ,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Your Son’ or the ‘Holy Spirit.'”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/politics/justices-take-case-on-prayer-at-town-board-meetings.html