Supreme Court Opens Hearing on Public Prayer

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case examining whether sectarian prayer should be allowed at government meetings.

The Supreme Court began the day’s session with its traditional opening, “God save the United States and this honorable court.” The irony of the high court hearing a public prayer complaint after its own mention of God was not lost on the justices.

Atheists sued the town of Greece, N.Y. for its practice of opening its town council meetings with mostly Christian prayers, and asking everyone to rise for those prayers. A federal appeals court sided with the plaintiffs, who insisted that any prayers said at council meetings must be nondenominational and inclusive, and the town then appealed to the Supreme Court. …

Based on the questions asked by the Justices....one gets the sense that they didn’t think this was a make-or-break episode with great implications. At one point....some Justice asked if they could just run a non-denominational type prayer....avoiding the phrase “fair-and-balanced” but hinting that strongly. The lawyers didn’t say much to that idea.

Personally, there’s a thousand things wrong with city or county council meetings these days, and this doesn’t rank in the top ten thousand issues. For these two folks who pressed on the case....they really didn’t have much of a life and got awful attached to the entertainment value of the council meetings.

Before the 1980s....you could run a city council meeting in most towns of 10,000 residents, and there’d never be more than six to eight people in the audience. After cable TV started to air these and folks suddenly realized lots of issues to press at these meetings....the value of the meetings went downhill. Today, it’s most arguments and special agenda settings for any city in the US to run a council meeting.

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