Tag Archives: ZZ: Galloway v. Town of Greece

Rick Garnett at Mirror of Justice: First, I think it would be a good thing if the possibility Eugene raises – i.e., that the Court might re-examine the so-called “endorsement test” — came to pass. I think the criticisms directed at that test in Steven Smith’s 1987 article had and have force. Next, even if the justices leave the “endorsement test” in place, I hope they do not follow the Second Circuit in importing that test into the legislative-prayer context.

Brett Harvey appeared on the Don Kroah Show to discuss Galloway v. Town of Greece. | MP3 audio 7:31 mins

David Cortman appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss Galloway v. Town of Greece.| MP3 audio 7:31 mins

KRQE (AP): The town is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based group that presses faith-based cases in courts nationwide. ADF senior counsel David Cortman said the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” Cortman said.

NC Register: “It is perfectly constitutional to allow community members to ask for God’s blessing according to their conscience,” Brett Harvey, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told Catholic News Agency on May 21. “A Supreme Court ruling reaffirming this historic tradition and making clear that prayer-givers are permitted to pray consistent with the dictates of their own conscience would both uphold the original understanding of the Constitution and provide needed clarity to put an end to these attacks on our American heritage.”

Patheos: Furthermore, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian non-profit organization based in Arizona where I live, appealed this case to the Supreme Court in briefs with support from 49 members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.

Christian News Network: “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” stated ADF senior counsel David Cortman. “The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the ‘history and tradition of this country.’ America continues this cherished practice.”

Brett Harvey appeared on radio to discuss the case. | A Closer Look with Sheila Liaugminas at Relevant Radio – MP3 audio 13:48 mins | The Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio — MP3 audio 12:05 mins

Blog.Lawyers.com: The court could limit its ruling to legislative prayer, or it could broaden it to encompass governmental prayer in general. “It could invert the rule and the exception, and turn the general rule that government cannot endorse religion into a much narrower rule that the government cannot endorse religion in the public schools and that the government can do what it likes outside of the public schools,” says Lund.

FRC Washington Update: Given the long tradition of legislative prayer in America, there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic about the case. If our friends at ADF prevail, there’s a strong possibility that the Court will not only affirm public prayer but significantly strengthen the religious freedom rights of all Americans. In the meantime, I encourage you to pray–publicly!–that the Supreme Court sides with America’s First Freedom!

CBN: “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” Harvey said. “Because the authors of the Constitution invoked God’s blessing on public proceedings, this tradition shouldn’t suddenly be deemed unconstitutional.”

USA Today: The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom appealed and the high-court ruling, expected by June 2014, will resolve conflicting appeals-court rulings about religious expression. Tuesday’s invocation was to have been given by Serah Blain, executive director of the Secular Coalition of Arizona. But Mendez said House staff had no record of his request to allow Blain’s remarks, so he offered the remarks himself.

CNA/EWTN on DFW Catholic: “The founders prayed while drafting our constitution’s Bill of Rights,” he said. “America continues this cherished practice, and a few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like.” Harvey said there have been 20 different federal lawsuits filed against local governments asking that they abandon their traditions of prayer. “A ruling against the Town of Greece would multiply the attacks on the historic practice of seeking divine guidance at public meetings and would suggest that the authors of the Bill of Rights were violating the Constitution, even as they were writing it,” he said.

Christian Examiner: “Americans certainly should have the same freedom as the Founders did,” Cortman told Baptist Press. “[Praying before government meetings] was a practice that was established over 200 years ago and certainly should be just as constitutional today.” The fact that most of the prayers offered were by Christians only reflected the town’s makeup, Cortman said. “The policy is open and neutral to anyone in the community,” Cortman said. “It’s merely a matter of the demographics of the community that make up the balance of prayers. What is a town to do? Engage in a religious Gerrymander and begin busing in people from all over the state and ask them, ‘What do you believe? What is your religion? How will you pray?’ That is the exact opposite of what the city should be doing. They should just open the forum and let the people in the community pray according to the dictates of their conscience. That’s what this town was doing.”
If the town begins monitoring the prayers and not allowing certain words, you have the “the local government controlling” the prayers — which itself would be unconstitutional, Cortman said.

Lyle Denniston at Constitution Daily: When the court agreed to hear the new prayer case from the city of Greece, New York, a community of about 100,000 people near Rochester, it stepped into a case in which a prayer practice at the opening of the town board meeting was struck down by a lower court using the endorsement theory. And, by granting review of that specific decision, the justices may well have been telegraphing a desire to second-guess the endorsement theory when prayers are recited at the outset of a public meeting of a government agency, with adults making up most of the audience.

Christian Post: “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” Brett Harvey, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said, according to USA Today. “Because the authors of the Constitution invoked God’s blessing on public proceedings, this tradition shouldn’t suddenly be deemed unconstitutional.”

Florida Today: Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian nonprofit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.

Robert Barnes at the Washington Post: The religious legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom represented the town of Greece — a community of about 100,000 residents near Rochester — in challenging the appeals court decision. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” senior counsel David Cortman said in a statement. “The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the ‘history and tradition of this country.’ ”

Business Insider: Thomas Hungar, representing Greece’s city hall with support from Alliance Defending Freedom, a social conservative group, said “legislative prayer” is deeply rooted in American history. “We hope the court will reaffirm the settled understanding that such prayers, offered without improper motive and in accordance with the conscience of the prayer-giver, are constitutional,” the lawyer said.

Stephen Prothero at CNN: That is unlikely to happen, since there is, as Alliance Defending Freedom has argued, an “unambiguous and unbroken history” of prayer in government bodies in the United States. But there is an equally long history of ensuring that these prayers are, as Americans United has observed, “inclusive and non-sectarian.” And those in Greece were neither.

Associated Baptist Press: David Cortman, senior counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the town, told the Post the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” he said.

Salon: As reported by USA Today: . . . David Cortman, a lawyer for the town, said in a statement that prayer at council meetings is consistent with a longstanding tradition of prayer at government functions: “Americans today should be as free as the founders were to pray,” he said. “The founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.”

JD Journal: The non-Christian town residents will be presented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, while the town will be represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, whose senior counsel, David Cortman, claims the framers of the Constitution prayed during the drafting of the Bill of Rights, and, as the Washington Post reports, “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray.”

Democrat and Chronicle: Alliance Defending Freedom, the national religious defense group representing Greece pro bono, said the court “affirmed America’s long-standing practice of opening public meetings with prayer in 1983 and now has the opportunity to do so again.” It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general . . . “The practice of legislative prayer is firmly embedded in the history and traditions of this nation,” said Thomas Hungar of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the attorney who filed the challenge. “We hope the court will reaffirm the settled understanding that such prayers, offered without improper motive and in accordance with the conscience of the prayer-giver, are constitutional.”

GOP USA: Recent legal attacks by people offended by such prayers have created significant confusion in the lower courts. “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” said Brett Harvey, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom.

Religion News Service at Washington Post: Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian nonprofit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.“A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” said the ADF’s senior counsel, Brett Harvey.

Christianity Today: The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the town in the case, says a previous, 30-year-old ruling still stands, settling the matter.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: ADF then asked Thomas Hungar of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, one of the most accomplished Supreme Court litigators in the nation—to become lead counsel on the case and join with ADF in asking the Supreme Court for review by filing a petition for certiorari. Today the Supreme Court granted that petition. ADF’s David Cortman says: Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray. The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the “history and tradition of this country.” American continues this cherished practice.

ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM NEWS RELEASE May 20, 2013 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT MEDIA AND PUBLIC RELATIONS: (480) 444-0020 orwww.adfmedia.org/home/contact   Prayer will be heard on high US Supreme Court to weigh in on prayers presented before public meetings   WASHINGTON — The U.S. …

Adam Liptak at NY Times: In 1983, in Marsh v. Chambers, the Supreme Court upheld the Nebraska Legislature’s practice of opening its legislative sessions with an invocation from a paid Presbyterian minister, saying that such ceremonies were “deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country.” David Cortman, a lawyer for the town, said its practices were consistent with that tradition. “Americans today should be as free as the founders were to pray,” he said in a statement. “The founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.”

Wall Street Journal (PR Newsire): Family Research Council (FRC) commends the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision today granting review in Town of Greece v. Galloway. If the Court decides in favor of the town of Greece, the decision could become the most significant religious liberty victory in half a century. Director of FRC’s Center for Religious Liberty, Ken Klukowski, J.D., submitted an amicus brief on behalf of 49 Members of Congress supporting the Alliance Defending Freedom’s petition in this case addressing public prayer before town meetings.

AP: Reacting to the court action Monday, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, said, “A town council meeting isn’t a church service, and it shouldn’t seem like one.” The town is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based group that presses faith-based cases in courts nationwide. ADF senior counsel David Cortman said the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” Cortman said.

AP: The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a new case on the intersection of religion and government in a dispute over prayers used to open public meetings.

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to weigh in on the extensively litigated issue of opening city council meetings with prayer.

Americans United for Sep. of Church and State: Supreme Court Should Rule Against Sectarian Prayers Before Town Board Meetings, Says Americans United

U Legal Director Ayesha N. Khan, who directed the litigation for Americans United and will argue the Town of Greece v. Galloway case before the Supreme Court, said the justices should uphold the lower court’s ruling. “Legislative bodies should focus on serving the community and stay out of the business of promoting religion,” Khan said.

Reuters: The Alliance for Defending Freedom, a group that describes itself as an advocate for the rights of people to express their faith, is spearheading the town’s legal fight. The group’s lawyers point out that the town has never regulated the content of prayers and did not discriminate in selecting prayer-givers. “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” Brett Harvey, one of the town’s lawyers, said in a statement. Galloway and Stephens have the support of another advocacy group, Americans United For Separation of Church and State.

Headline and Global News: Brett Harvey, senior consul for Alliance Defending Freedom, an advocacy group whose aim is “transforming the legal system and advocating for religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage and family,” according to their website, argues that a few offended people shouldn’t be able to bring down a longstanding tradition. “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because the heard something they didn’t like,” Harvey said. “Because the authors of the Constitution invoked God’s blessing on public proceedings, this tradition shouldn’t suddenly be deemed unconstitutional.”

USA Today: “A few people should not be able to extinguish the traditions of our nation merely because they heard something they didn’t like,” said Brett Harvey, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. “Because the authors of the Constitution invoked God’s blessing on public proceedings, this tradition shouldn’t suddenly be deemed unconstitutional.” Thomas Hungar of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the attorney who filed the challenge, said, “The practice of legislative prayer is firmly embedded in the history and traditions of this nation. We hope the court will reaffirm the settled understanding that such prayers, offered without improper motive and in accordance with the conscience of the prayer-giver, are constitutional.”

Democrat and Chronicle: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday postponed deciding whether to review a prayer case involving the town of Greece.

WBTA1490.com: A religious freedom lawsuit involving the town of Greece could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The group Alliance Defending Freedom has asked the high court to reconsider an appeals court ruling involving prayers used to start Greece Town Board meetings.

Democrat and Chronicle: David Cortman is senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, which has represented Greece at no charge since the case was filed in 2009 by two Greece residents who objected to the prayers. He blasted the appellate court decision, noting a long history in the U.S. of opening legislative sessions with prayer. “The town of Greece had a constitutional practice of allowing citizens to voluntarily deliver a prayer according to the dictates of their own conscience,” he said via email. “While the district court upheld the practice, the appeals court found it unconstitutional because the town did not invite non-Christian clergy from outside its borders.”

Chris Gacek of FRC at the Washington Times: In May 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit issued an aggressive, secular ruling in a “legislative” prayer case arising from a small town in western New York. In Town of Greece v. Galloway . . . The court applied a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis that paid close attention to the content of the prayers. The court recognized the prayers “did not preach conversion, threaten damnation to nonbelievers, downgrade other faiths, or the like.” Nevertheless, the court balanced factors like the proportion of prayers offered by self-identified Christians, whether prayers “contained uniquely Christian references,” and finally whether the person offering the prayer used first-person plural pronouns (“we” or “us”).

Liberty Institute: oday, on behalf of several distinguished Christian theologians and scholars, Liberty Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the United States Supreme Court supporting a request for the High Court to hear an important religious freedom case that could determine the future of prayers before legislative bodies throughout the U.S. The theologians seek to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s ruling in the case Galloway v. Town of Greece, which declared the town’s legislative prayers unconstitutional because they were not religiously diverse. A copy of the brief may be found here.

In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said that, because the town contains predominantly Christian clergy, it should invite non-Christians from other jurisdictions to invite to pray at its own town meetings and take other uncommon steps to ensure that non-Christians do not “feel like outsiders.”

WWNTRadio: Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore (R) from Gallant announced that he and the Foundation for Moral Law legal organization in Montgomery, Alabama, have filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Alan Sears at TellADF: Few cases illustrate so clearly the lengths to which many in today’s legal culture will go to undermine your Christian heritage and religious liberties as one Alliance Defense Fund attorneys are currently appealing in Greece, New York.

The New American: Oster pointed out that the U.S. Constitution “has never required any local government to engage in such gymnastics to have prayer, as is clearly seen by the prayers of America’s Founding Fathers. Prayer-givers have a right protected …

Fox News: The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group that presses faith-based cases in courts nationwide, represented the town in court. It said it will appeal the ruling.
Joel Oster, senior counsel for ADF who argued the town’s case, called the ruling “highly inconsistent” with what the Supreme Court has said on the issue and said it means towns will have to “complete an obstacle course” before they can qualify to say a prayer before a meeting. “The town has no obligation to go outside of its borders as if it’s an affirmative action program,” he said.

Findlaw: “The court wants the town to be prayer monitors, to determine how many prayers in Jesus’ name are too many,” which would violate the Establishment Clause, the Alliance Defense Fund’s Joel Oster told Thomson Reuters News & Insight.

One News Now: . . . ADF attorney Joel Oster tells OneNewsNow prayers have been offered according to the “conscience of the speaker.” “There is no legal reason why a town cannot engage in this practice today with people from within its own community,” he asserts. “The district court rightly affirmed the constitutionality of the town’s policy, and we will appeal the Second Circuit’s decision. Secularist groups cannot be allowed to force local governments to engage in strange hoops and hurdles that effectively eliminate prayers by making them too difficult to take place.”

Federal News Radio: The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group that presses faith-based cases in courts nationwide, represented the town in court. It said it will appeal the ruling. Joel Oster, senior counsel for ADF who argued the town’s case, called the ruling “highly inconsistent” with what the Supreme Court has said on the issue and said it means towns will have to “complete an obstacle course” before they can qualify to say a prayer before a meeting. “The town has no obligation to go outside of its borders as if it’s an affirmative action program,” he said.

2nd Circuit says town should go outside its borders to search for non-Christians

Reuters: Joel Oster of the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents Greece, said the town was prepared to appeal the case as far as the Supreme Court. “The court wants the town to be prayer monitors, to determine how many prayers in Jesus’ name are too many,” he said. That outcome violates the Establishment Clause, he said. Oster pointed to a 2008 ruling by the 11th Circuit in Pelphrey v. Cobb County, Georgia, upholding a county commission’s opening prayer policy.| Galloway v. Town of Greece, No. 10-3635-cv

OneNewsNow.com: Alliance Defense Fund attorney Kevin Theriot says that since the nation’s founding, public meetings have been opened with prayer — and there is no legal reason, he explains, why a town should be denied this right. “This practice has always been lawful in America, and the district court rightly affirmed its constitutionality in this case last year,” says Theriot

Democrat and Chronicle: The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian organization, has represented the town pro bono.

Democrat and Chronicle: The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian organization, has represented the town pro bono.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster will be available for media interviews Monday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit following his oral argument at a hearing concerning the right of the Greece Town Board to open public meetings with prayers offered by invited clergy

Greece Post: “Non profit church-state group Americans United for Separation of Church and State are appealing a decision reached by U.S. District Court Judge Charles Siragusa in August, which declared the opening prayer at Greece town board meetings to be constitutional . . . [Joel Oster], senior legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund, which represened the town, said he is very confident going forward.”

ADF’s Weekly Update is on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqWRY3RGuvU.

Greece Post: “[Joel Oster], a senior legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund, who represented the Town of Greece, said the ruling was ‘very exciting.’ ‘The court did the right thing in upholding this practice,’ said Oster. ‘I think historically, Americans have rallied around prayer.’”

ADF Attorney Joel Oster writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “A federal district court rejected a lawsuit filed by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in so doing, exposed their true anti-Christian agenda . . . [K]nowing that they couldn’t stop the prayers, they then sought to challenge prayers ‘in Jesus’ name.’ This is really what bothers them. Fortunately, the court rejected this attempt at prayer censorship. If Americans United had stayed true to their identity, they would not be asking government officials to tell local clergy how and to whom to pray. This is a matter best left to theologians, not courts of law or local governments.”

OneNewsNow: “The Rochester suburb has continued prayer — legally. But Oster believes Greece is an example of how to handle a situation if atheist organizations threaten a lawsuit. ‘This town did everything perfectly and they were respecting the Constitution,’ he comments. ‘And they were also respecting the heritage we have here in America of opening up legislative bodies and legislative sessions with prayer.’”

Democrat and Chronicle: “‘I think the judge recognized the irony that Americans United for Separation of Church and State wanted the town to tell clergy how and to whom to pray,’ [ADF Attorney Joel Oster] said. ‘And I think the decision recognizes that we don’t have to rewrite our history. America does allow for religious freedom and legislative bodies regularly open their sessions with prayer.’” | ADF News Release

WorldNetDaily: “A federal judge in New York has rejected a demand from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State that a town board be ordered to change its invocation procedures so that the statements from volunteers on a rotating basis would be more ‘ecumenical’ and ‘inclusive’ . . . ‘America’s founders opened public meetings with prayer,’ said Senior Legal Counsel [Joel Oster] of the Alliance Defense Fund, which defended the town’s practices. ‘Opening public meetings with prayer has always been lawful in America, and the court here affirmed that it still is today,’ he said.” | ADF News Release

ADF attorneys secure favorable decision in legal attack filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State