dmachACLU

And I'm Daniel Mach, Director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. We filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs in the case.

I suspect that the ruling won't address school board meetings either way, which will leave in place the current rule in that context, a rule consistently applied by the lower courts: School board meetings do not fit within the Marsh exception for legislative prayer, and so any government prayer at those meetings (sectarian or otherwise) violates the Establishment Clause.

The federal government's participation in the case was wholly unnecessary. At this morning's argument, the government faced some tough questions and had a difficult time reconciling its view that (a) courts and legislative bodies shouldn't be examining the content of legislative prayer, but (b) prayers that proselytize should be off-limits.

The mythical "war on religion" rages on -- at least in the minds of those who would commandeer the machinery of government to promote their preferred faith. I suppose this case could feed into that myth, but we just need to keep reminding folks that religious liberty, including the right not to believe, thrives best when the government doesn't play favorites with faith.

The town's case continues to suffer from some fundamental flaws, and those were evident during the argument. Among other things, under the town's view of the Constitution, any and all government-sponsored prayers -- no matter how vitriolic or disparaging of other faiths -- would be permissible.