Opinion ID: 758866
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sui generis status of legislative prayers

Text: 20 Prior to 1983, the lower courts had reached a consensus, but without any consistent rationale, on the conundrum of whether overtly religious prayers by local and state legislative bodies in opening their legislative sessions constituted the kind of religious activity banned by the Establishment Clause. With varying reasoning, the lower courts agreed that such legislative prayers did not fall within the prohibition against a law respecting an establishment of religion. See Bogen v. Doty, 598 F.2d 1110, 1113-14 (8th Cir.1979) (applying the three-part test of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971), in upholding a county board's practice of invocational prayers because they had a clearly secular purpose, but warning that the county's selection procedures for who should give such prayers were dangerously close to the quagmire of excessive entanglement and that the board would be in a difficult position if it rejected a volunteer because of his or her religious persuasion); Colo v. Treasurer & Receiver General, 378 Mass. 550, 392 N.E.2d 1195, 1199-1200 (1979) (upholding the state's practice of paying legislative chaplains in large part because of the practice's long history and tradition and because it did not present substantial divisive political potential); Marsa v. Wernik, 86 N.J. 232, 430 A.2d 888, 895-96 (upholding invocational prayers at a borough council meeting because the religious dimension of the prayers did not predominate over secular goals, nor was the primary effect of the prayer to promote or inhibit religion), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 958, 102 S.Ct. 495, 70 L.Ed.2d 373 (1981); Lincoln v. Page, 109 N.H. 30, 241 A.2d 799, 800-01 (1968) (upholding a town's practice of invocational prayers at each annual town meeting because of a de minimis religious effect, historic use, and similarity to religious references on coins, currency, public buildings and plaques). 21 In 1983, however, the Supreme Court swept away the various approaches with its pathmarking decision in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 103 S.Ct. 3330, 77 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1983). Noting that [t]he opening of sessions of legislative and other deliberative public bodies with prayer is deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country, the Court held that [t]his unique history leads us to accept the interpretation of the First Amendment draftsmen who saw no real threat to the Establishment Clause arising from a practice of prayer [opening a legislative session]. Marsh, 463 U.S. at 786, 791, 103 S.Ct. 3330, 77 L.Ed.2d 1019. In the course of reaching this holding, the Court surveyed the historical record of the views of the framers of the Constitution as well as the practices of the early Congresses and the infant state legislatures. The Court concluded, Clearly the men who wrote the First Amendment Religion Clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that Amendment, for the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. Id. at 788, 103 S.Ct. 3330. 22 Although the Court relied solely--and to the exclusion of its traditional establishment tests--on a historical analysis to justify the practice of legislative prayers in Marsh, 8 since that decision the Court has repeatedly avoided applying Marsh 's mode of historical analysis. See, e.g., County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, 492 U.S. 573, 603, 109 S.Ct. 3086, 106 L.Ed.2d 472 (1989) (rejecting the dissenting argument in Allegheny County that the Marsh historical analysis controlled the constitutionality of traditional creche displays at Christmas: However history may affect the constitutionality of nonsectarian references to religion by the government, history cannot legitimate practices that demonstrate the government's allegiance to a particular sect or creed.) Instead, the evolution of Establishment Clause jurisprudence indicates that the constitutionality of legislative prayers is a sui generis legal question. As Justice Brennan noted in his dissent in Marsh, the kind of legislative prayers at issue in Marsh simply would not have survived the traditional Establishment Clause tests that the Court had relied on prior to Marsh and has continued to rely on in different contexts since Marsh. See Marsh, 463 U.S. at 796, 103 S.Ct. 3330 (Brennan, J., dissenting). For this reason, the mainline body of Establishment Clause case law provides little guidance for our decision in this case. Our decision, instead, depends on our interpretation of the holding in Marsh. 23 In describing its conclusion that legislative prayers do not violate the First Amendment, the Marsh Court approached the question first and foremost as a facial issue, separate from the particular nuances of the Nebraska practice there under review. The Court made clear that it was considering legislative prayers as a kind of religious genre, and it was this particular genre that was unvitiated by the Establishment Clause: 24 In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not, in these circumstances, an establishment of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country. 25 Id. at 792, 103 S.Ct. 3330. This religious genre known as legislative prayer includes the traditional kind of invocational legislative prayers with which the Court was familiar, as well as similarly traditional governmental invocations such as the cry, God save the United States and this Honorable Court, intoned by the Court's bailiff at the beginning of its own sessions. 9 See id. at 786, 103 S.Ct. 3330. As Justice O'Connor later explained, these kinds of government acknowledgments of religion serve, in the only ways reasonably possible in our culture, the legitimate secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions, expressing confidence in the future, and encouraging the recognition of what is worthy of appreciation in society. Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 693, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1984) (O'Connor, J., concurring). In Lynch, the majority observed that the Establishment Clause cannot mechanistically be applied to draw unwavering, universal lines for all of the varying contexts of public life. Rather, the clause erects a  'blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship.'  Id. at 679, 104 S.Ct. 1355 (quoting Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 614, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971)). The Court noted that [i]t would be difficult to identify a more striking example of the accommodation of religious belief intended by the Framers [than legislative invocational prayer]. Id. at 674, 104 S.Ct. 1355. 26 We are obliged, therefore, to read Marsh as establishing the constitutional principle that the genre of government religious activity that has come down to us over 200 years of history and which we now call legislative prayer does not violate the Establishment Clause. Furthermore, as a consequence of the fact that this genre of government religious activity cannot exist without the government actually selecting someone to offer such prayers, the decision in Marsh also must be read as establishing the constitutional principle that a legislative body does not violate the Establishment Clause when it chooses a particular person to give its invocational prayers. Similarly, there can be no Establishment Clause violation merely in the fact that a legislative body chooses not to appoint a certain person to give its prayers. The act of choosing one person necessarily is an act of excluding others, and as a result, if Marsh allows a legislative body to select a speaker for its invocational prayers, then it also allows the legislative body to exclude other speakers. 27