Tangi school board: It never said no to non-Christian prayers

The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), March 13, 2007

Amite, La. (AP) -- It isn't what is said but why it is said that matters most when a school board meeting opens with a prayer, attorneys for the Tangipahoa Parish School Board argue.

As a legislative body, the board should be able to open with prayer, just as the U.S. Congress and Louisiana Legislature do, said briefs filed Monday with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

They say the American Civil Liberties Union's unidentified plaintiffs never offered any evidence that the board used the prayers to proselytize or that the board ever denied anyone of another religion a chance to offer a non-Christian prayer.

The full 5th Circuit has agreed to reconsider a ruling that the board's Christian prayer was unconstitutional but that prayers that do not advocate a particular religious point of view -- like those at legislatures and Congress -- might be legal at school board meetings.

Although the board struck down the prayers 2-1, each of the three judges wrote a separate opinion. Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale wrote that the prayers' Christian nature amounted to proselytizing, and were therefore forbidden under a long-standing U.S. Supreme Court opinion.

The other two judges agreed and disagreed with different parts of Barksdale's ruling in the case, which began in 2003 and led to both a consent judgment and continued court fights in the ensuing years.

Both the board and the ACLU appealed different parts of the Dec. 15 ruling. The ACLU's deadline for briefs is later.

Barksdale's 35-page ruling noted that the Supreme Court has ruled that legislatures may open with nonsectarian prayers that do not advocate a particular religious point of view.

U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan had ruled that all prayers were forbidden at school board meetings.

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