A court has sided with an atheist group and rules against Christian prayers at California school board meetings.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld an injunction against a California school board’s policy of allowing school-sponsored Christian prayers at meetings.
The panel ruled in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and other plaintiffs against Chino Valley Unified School District.
The ruling upheld a lower court decision granting FFRF and local plaintiffs an injunction against the school board practice.
The judges wrote, “The Board’s prayer policy and practice violate the Establishment Clause. The invocations to start the open portions of Board meetings are not within the legislative prayer tradition that allows certain types of prayer to open legislative sessions,”
“This is not the sort of solemnizing and unifying prayer, directed at lawmakers themselves and conducted before an audience of mature adults free from coercive pressures to participate, that the legislative-prayer tradition contemplates.”
The panel added that in contrast to past decisions allowing for the presence of sectarian prayers at government meetings, “these prayers typically take place before groups of schoolchildren whose attendance is not truly voluntary and whose relationship to school district officials, including the Board, is not one of full parity.”
In 2014, the Chino Valley school board passed a resolution allowing for an invocation to be given at meetings either by a local clergyman or a board member saying they help members set aside the petty differences.