GREECE, N.Y. – The U.S. Supreme Court could rule any day now on whether a town board’s prayers before meetings violate the Constitution.
The case, Greece v. Galloway, began in 2008 when Susan Galloway, who is Jewish, and Linda Stephens, an atheist, complained that Christian prayers at the upstate New York town’s board meetings made them uncomfortable. Every meeting from 1999 through 2007 had opened with a Christian-oriented invocation.
After the complaints, the town, in 2008, had a Wiccan priestess, the chairman of the local Baha’i congregation and a lay Jewish man deliver four of the prayers.
Town Supervisor William Reilich said the town accepts requests from people of any religion to deliver the prayer.
The two residents lost their suit in U.S. District Court after the judge found that the town did not intentionally exclude non-Christians and that the content of the prayer was not intended to proselytize or demean other faiths.
But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the practice of having one Christian prayer after another amounted to the town’s endorsement of Christianity.
