Recent articles supporting the Commissioners’ decision to surrender First Amendment prayer rights contain flawed assumptions. The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.” In the recent Supreme Court Case, Greece v. Galloway, Justice Thomas argued, “the case should be dismissed because the Establishment Clause doesn’t apply to the states and its subdivisions, but only to Congress.” In other words, issuing a sectarian prayer does not rise to the threshold of violating the Establishment Clause. In Carroll County, for 8 years, two commissioners occasionally closed a prayer in the name of Christ, Jesus, or Savior. However, commissioners were careful to ensure their prayers never violated guidelines that would render their prayers constitutionally problematic. Although a recent editorial in the Sun touches on some of these guidelines, it drew faulty conclusions, by simply assuming they were violated by Carroll County. They weren’t. For example. Justice Kennedy wrote, “Legislative bodies do not engage in impermissible coercion merely by exposing constituents to prayer they would rather not hear and in which they need not participate.” In Carroll County, no citizen was ever asked to bow […]
