On The Front Lines
Rutherford Institute President Provides Culpeper Town Council with Guidelines on Prayer at City Council Meetings
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Responding to recent reports that the Culpeper (Va.) Town Council is preparing to reconsider its decision to remove invocations at town council meetings and replace them with a generic moment of silence, The Rutherford Institute has provided the Culpeper Town Attorney and members of the Town Council with guidelines for constitutionally permissible methods of offering prayers/invocations before City Council meetings. The guidelines analyze the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' 2004 ruling in Wynne v. Town of Great Falls, S.C., in which the court held that City Council members in Great Falls violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause by engaging in prayers that contained explicit references to a deity of one specific faith."There are constitutionally permissible alternatives remaining that permit prayer at City Council meetings, in spite of this Wynne ruling," stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, in his letter to the Culpeper Town Attorney and Council members.
Since the Wynne ruling, a number of City Councils have had their practice of opening meetings with prayer challenged. For example, in 2004, the Culpeper Town Council asked its local ministers to refrain from praying to "specific deities" during opening prayers of council meetings. In Fredericksburg, Va., the Town Council Attorney asked ministers not to refer to "Jesus, Christ or any variation of those specific names" while praying at council meetings. However, as The Rutherford Institute's guidelines point out, "because prayers delivered by clergy or other private citizens constitute private speech, rather than government speech, there is no reason to restrict the content of such prayers." The guidelines' suggestions for permissible methods for offering prayer before City Council meetings include offering nonsectarian prayers, sectarian prayers of many faiths and prayers for the benefit of the Council members only.
The Rutherford Institute's guidelines for constitutionally permissible prayer at City Council meetings are available online here (PDF).
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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