The Freedom From Religion Foundation is deeply dismayed over what it calls a “Christian nationalist” interpretation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by an appeals court decision approving courtroom prayer. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a local justice of the peace’s practice in Texas of locking doors and opening with a prayer ceremony is “noncoercive.” FFRF had won its challenge against Montgomery County Judge Wayne Mack’s courtroom prayer practice last year in district court. Plaintiffs FFRF and local attorney “John Roe” had sued Mack over his divisive practice of opening each court session with chaplain-led prayer. U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt ruled in May 2021: “The court is of the view that the defendant violates the Establishment Clause when, before a captured audience of litigants and their counsel, he presents himself as theopneustically inspired, enabling him to advance, through the chaplaincy program, God’s ‘larger purpose.’ Such a magnanimous goal flies in the face of historical tradition, and makes a mockery of both religion and law.” Overturning that decision are U.S. 5th Circuit Judges Jerry Edwin Smith and Kurt D. Engelhardt. Judge E. Grady Jolly, who concurred in part, authored […]
