The Supreme Court has declined to take up a case next term involving a North Carolina county that opened its bimonthly meetings with a prayer.
In deciding not the hear the case, the high court leaves in place a lower court ruling that found the Rowan County Board of Commissioners’ prayer practice was unconstitutional.
Under the practice, the five-member Board of Commissioners in Rowan County, N.C., started each meeting with a prayer, which the commissioners rotated leading. But three Rowan County residents sued the county in 2013, saying their First Amendment rights had been violated.
A district court sided with the residents, and the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling against the county and saying that because the prayers were led by commissioners, it “identifies the government with religion more strongly” and “heightens the constitutional risks posed by requests to participate and by sectarian prayers.”
Lawyers representing the county appealed to the Supreme Court in 2017, hoping the court would clear up a split among the federal circuit courts as to whether legislative prayer is permitted and rule in favor of the county under previous rulings related to prayer before public meetings.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the denial of certiorari.
“In ruling that Rowan County must change the prayers it uses to open its board meetings, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit emphasized that the county’s prayers are led by the legislators themselves, not by paid chaplains or guest ministers. This analysis failed to appreciate the long history of legislator-led prayer in this country, and it squarely contradicted a recent decision of the Sixth Circuit,” Thomas wrote.
He noted that for “as long as this country has had legislative prayer, legislators have led it.”
“The historical evidence show that Congress sand state legislatures have opened legislative sessions with legislative-led prayer for more than a century,” Thomas wrote.
