High court won't hear Utah challenge to prayer before council meetings
The Associated Press
03.29.99
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today rejected the appeal of a Utah man whose request to give the opening prayer at a city council meeting was turned down because of its unusual content.
The court, without comment, refused to hear Tom Snyder's argument that the city council in Murray, Utah, unlawfully favored one religion over another by rejecting his proposed prayer.
"The danger is we get government-approved prayers and we get government-censored prayers," Snyder's attorney, Brian Barnard, said today.
Barnard said he plans to ask the court for a rehearing in light of a March 18 appeals court ruling in a Cleveland School Board case that he said contradicts the ruling the high court left intact today.
The 10th Circuit Appeals Court ruled for the city, saying Snyder's planned prayer was more of a "political harangue" that fell outside this nation's "long-accepted genre of legislative prayer."
Snyder's proposed prayer was addressed to "our mother, who art in heaven (if, indeed there is a heaven and if there is a god that takes a woman's form)." It asked "that you deliver us from the evil of forced religious worship" and questioned "if in fact you had a son that visited Earth."
The city council in Salt Lake City dropped its practice of opening meetings with an invocation rather than allow Snyder to offer his prayer. Later, in March 1994, he asked Murray officials to let him say the prayer to open a city council meeting.
The city attorney told him the prayer "is not a time to express political views (or) attack city policies or practices." City officials refused to let Snyder offer an invocation but said he could give the prayer during the council meeting's public comment period.
Snyder sued, saying the council's action violated the Constitution's First Amendment ban on government establishment of religion. A federal judge ruled against him, as did the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court said traditional "legislative prayer" involves "nonsectarian requests for wisdom and solemnity, as well as calls for divine blessing on the work of the legislative body." Prayers that promote a particular religious creed or disparage another creed can be rejected without violating the Constitution, the appeals court said.
In the appeal acted on today, Snyder's lawyers said the city cannot discriminate between religious ideas.
"It's sure not something that makes me happy," said Barnard of the ruling. "The idea of separation of church and state is so government does not become the controller of people's prayers or the content of people's prayers and that's exactly what's happened here."
The case is Snyder v. Murray City, 98-1193.
Previous
Federal appeals court upholds dismissal of Utah man's prayer suit
Tom Snyder claimed city council violated his constitutional rights when it rejected a proposed prayer that began, 'Our Mother, who art in heaven.'
10.29.98
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