Supreme Court declines to decide whether city-backed prayer vigil violated First Amendment
The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear arguments in a dispute between officials in a central Florida city who encouraged residents to attend a prayer vigil and two atheists who claimed the city’s involvement violated the First Amendment.
The decision to decline the case, which was made without comment from the high court, leaves in place a federal appeals court ruling that found at least one of the plaintiffs was within their rights to sue over the vigil. The lawsuit may now continue in a lower court.
Two of the court’s conservatives justices wrote brief opinions about the decision to decline the case. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch signaled support for the city’s view but said that it was too early for the Supreme Court to weigh in. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision.
attend the 2014 vigil after a series of drive-by shootings left several children injured. Then-Ocala Police Chief Greg Graham signed a letter, posted on the department’s website, encouraging people to attend. The vigil featured police chaplains onstage praying and singing in their uniforms, court records show.
At issue for the Supreme Court was a more procedural question: Whether the plaintiffs, who attended the rally and alleged they were “aggrieved” by what they saw, were injured enough to meet the threshold for suing. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled last year that at least one of the plaintiffs had standing to sue.
schools that offer religious instruction. The decision means that parents in Maine could use a state subsidy to send their children to religious schools. high school football coach who lost his job after offering prayers at the 50-yard line after games despite objections from the school district that students felt compelled to take part. A 6-3 majority ruled that assistant coach Joseph Kennedy’s prayers were a private matter and did not amount to the school district’s endorsement of Christianity.
For decades, the high court’s guiding doctrine for deciding cases dealing with the intersection of government and religion was the “Lemon test,” named after a 1971 decision in which the court ruled government policies must have a secular purpose, cannot advance or inhibit religion and cannot excessively entangle church and state.
In a 1984 concurring opinion that some lower courts have read as part of the Lemon test, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor raised the idea that the justices should consider whether a policy amounts to an endorsement or disapproval of religion. But in recent years the court has bypassed Lemon and last year it openly dismissed it.
What it means for Ocala, other religious cases
The Ocala litigation may be among the first to probe the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Kennedy case. The city, represented by Jay Sekulow, argued that a “claim of personal offense or dismay, without more,” doesn’t give people the right to sue for a violation of the First Amendment.
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Gorsuch wrote Monday that he saw “no need for the court’s intervention at this juncture” but he questioned whether Americans sue for the reasons the plaintiffs raised.