Town of Greece v. Galloway

Town of Greece v. Galloway

The Town of Greece County Commission desires to have a clergy-led prayer at the beginning of each meeting and has requested that the managing attorney and legal counsel for the county commission provide her views on the wisdom of opening each monthly meeting with a prayer and whether such prayers are permitted within the realms of the U.S. Constitution. The managing attorney has requested a written analysis of the Supreme Court case Town of Greece v. Galloway.

Facts of the Case

The county commission meetings are similar to the town meetings in the Town of Greece including such as award presentations and ceremonial events at the beginning of the meeting. However, the county commission also has frequent hearings in which citizens speak advocating for certain positions and occasionally experts and citizens given sworn testimony during the meeting. The county is predominantly Christian and Protestant but there are also Baptist and Methodist, and Presbyterian churches and Pentecostal places of worship. In addition there are Quaker meeting houses and one Catholic Church as well as Jewish community in the county, a few Muslim places of worship and even a group of Wiccans, Buddhists, and Hindus. Some concern exists because there is no equivalent of clergy in some of these religions. The county commission wants to advertise in local publications and in the news about clergy who would be interested in volunteering to lead the prayer before the meetings and intends to give a commemorative plaque to those who do lead the prayers.

Questions for Analysis

There is a question as to whether in regards to prayers being allowed if the majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy of Justice Kagan in the dissent more accurately characterize the Town of Greece meetings as being similar or dissimilar from the legislative sessions in Marsh. Justice Kennedy writes in the majority opinion in the case Town of Greece, New York, Petitioner v. Susan Galloway, et al. that the District Court rejected the idea that there is a First Amendment requirement for prayers in town meetings to be nonsectarian. Justice Kennedy states "Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, which permitted prayer in state legislatures by a chaplain paid from the public purse, so long as the prayer opportunity was not "exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief, " id., at 794-795." (p. 3, Section 1, Line 2)

According to Marsh, Justice Kennedy states that there was not found any requirement that the prayers 'be purged of sectarian content." (p. 3, Section1, Line 9) However, the Court of Appeals found that that Town of Greek v. Galloway was such that audience members who were not religious had been placed in awkward positions by being basically forced into participation of the prayers. Justice Kennedy states however, that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed on the opinion of the Appeals Court upon the basis that in the case Marsh v. Chambers 463 Y,/s, 783 that the Court had "found no First Amendment violation in the Nebraska Legislature's practice of opening its sessions with a prayer delivered by a chaplain paid from state funds. The decision concluded that legislative prayer, while religious in nature, has long been understood as compatible with the Establishment Clause. As practiced by Congress since the framing of the Constitution, legislative prayer lends gravity to public business, reminds lawmakers to transcend petty differences in pursuit of a higher purpose, and expresses a common aspiration to a just and peaceful society." (p. 4, Section 1, Line.41)

Justice Kagan, in his dissenting opinion in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway that he believes that the Town of Greece's prayer practices "violates that norm of religion equality the breathtakingly generous constitutional idea that our public institutions belong no less to the Buddhist or Hindu than to the Methodist or Episcopalian." (p. 1, Section 1, Line 34) Justice Kagan states the belief that the Town of Greece failed to acknowledge diversity. However, this is not upheld in the information provided by the county commission but rather the opposite is clearly shown in the process the county commission used to reach out to all religious groups in the community and attempt to gain their participation in the prayer at the beginning of the county commission's meeting. Justice Kennedy's opinion is clearly more on point in the decision in the case Town of Greece v. Galloway.

Because county commission meetings include taking sworn testimony from citizens and experts, it is likely that the county commission meetings are more likely to be viewed as legislative sessions such as the case of Marsh. This is held to be true as Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in the case of Town of Greece v. Calloway relies greatly on the findings in Marsh.

Justice Breyer held in his dissenting opinion that he the Town of Greece had failed in the diversity of prayers because of the number of Christian or Protestant prayers given at the county commission meetings and states that the minority religions had only been allowed to give prayers after they had reached out to the Town of Greece to do so. However, the facts in this case clearly show that all religions in the Town of Greece and its county area had been given the same opportunity to volunteer to give prayers at the beginning of the county commission meetings. Insofar at the content of the prayers, the U.S. Constitution makes no requirement that sectarian views or beliefs or phrases be sanitized from prayers and this includes the prayer of all religious beliefs represented in prayers given in these types of meetings.

The commission's proposed method of inviting persons to pray is acceptable under the parameters set forth in the majority opinion in Town of Greece for the reason that all religious groups in the county are invited to volunteer to offer prayer and no group, religion, or church organization is barred or discouraged but rather all are encouraged to participate in the prayers.

The research conducted in this study shows that prayer in meetings such as the county commission meetings can be an issue of contention but according to the tenets of the U.S. Constitution, such prayers encourage participants in such meetings to be in a mind of seriousness and to understand the importance and gravity of decisions made in such a meeting. As noted in the majority opinion of Justice Kennedy:

"Marsh is sometimes described as "carving out an exception" to the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence, because it sustained legislative prayer without subjecting the practice to "any of the formal 'tests' that have traditionally structured" this inquiry. Id., at 796, (Brennan, J., dissenting). The Court in Marsh found those tests unnecessary because history supported the conclusion that legislative invocations are compatible with the Establishment Clause. The First Congress made it an early item of business to appoint and pay official chaplains, and both the House and Senate have maintained the office virtually uninterrupted since that time." (p.4. Section1, Line 6)