A Defeat for Religious Neutrality - NYT Editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/opinion/a-defeat-for-religious-neutrality.html?_r=0

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMAY 5, 2014

The American values of pluralism and inclusion are central to the First Amendment, which forbids government from favoring or aligning itself with any particular religion or believers over nonbelievers.

In a lamentable ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority brushed past those core values to allow the town of Greece, in upstate New York, to begin its town hall meetings with a sectarian prayer nearly always from a Christian “chaplain of the month.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, relied on the Supreme Court’s decision in Marsh v. Chambers, a 1983 case in which the court upheld the Nebraska Legislature’s practice of opening its sessions with a chaplain’s prayer, saying that such invocations were “deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country.”

Yet, as Justice Elena Kagan emphasized in a persuasive dissent, determining whether a particular prayer program violates the First Amendment is a fact-specific exercise, and there are important distinctions between the practice in the Nebraska case and the practice in the New York town. Justice Kagan said a town-hall meeting “need not become a religion-free zone,” and that “legislative prayer has a distinctive constitutional warrant by virtue of tradition,” dating back to the first session of Congress. But she said the practice in the town of Greece does not fit that tradition, for starters, because, unlike the Nebraska case, which involved an audience of elected legislators, the town hall meetings involved ordinary citizens, some there to petition their local government for permits, zoning variances and other individualized matters.

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