The atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation has demanded that a school district in North Carolina quit the practice of beginning meetings with Christian prayers.
Last week, FFRF sent a letter to Michele Morris, general counsel with Union County Public Schools, expressing opposition to the board’s practice of allowing Christian clergy to open meetings with prayer, claiming the practice is unconstitutional.
But In 2014, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Town of Greece v. Galloway that prayers, even sectarian ones, could be given at government meetings.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in that case, stating: “The Court must decide whether the town of Greece, New York, imposes an impermissible establishment of religion by opening its monthly board meetings with a prayer. It must be concluded … that no violation of the Constitution has been shown.”
But challenges continue in lower courts. In 2018 a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction against a California school district’s practice of allowing school-sponsored Christian prayers at meetings.
In that case, the panel ruled that the Board’s prayer policy and practice violate the Establishment Clause of the constitution.
However that was not the ruling of the full court and the ninth circuit has long been known as the nation’s most liberal appellate court.