Justices bless prayer at civic meetings

The Supreme Court has declared that the Constitution not only allows for prayer at government meetings, but allows sectarian prayer.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy held that the town of Greece, New York, did not violate the Constitution’s Establishment Clause—which forbids the government from endorsing a religion—by sponsoring clergy who delivered sectarian prayers.

“To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures sponsoring prayers and the courts deciding these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech,” Kennedy wrote May 5 for himself and the conservatives on the court.