Town of Greece decision deprives Americans of religious freedom

The five-justice majority opinion in Town of Greece v. Galloway was horrendous from a religious freedom perspective. But the four-justice dissent wasn’t much better. Essentially Greece was a 9-0 decision reaffirming the Court’s 1983 Marsh v. Chambers decision which held that legislative bodies may open their meetings with a prayer notwithstanding the First Amendment prohibition against government establishments of religion. 

The majority doesn't give a hoot that America is a diverse society with a significant portion of the population that does not believe in a deity. And the minority merely pays lip service to diversity so long as the prayers are of a Judeo-Christian variety. With six Catholics and three Jews on the Court, the result is not surprising -- none supported the Jefferson-Madison principle of separation of church and state.

From a nonbeliever’s perspective, the majority’s opinion written by Justice Kennedy and the minority opinion written by Justice Kagan merely split hairs about how proselytizing the prayers can be.

The problem is that both sides consider the United States to be a religious nation, whereas the truth is that our Constitution established a secular nation that guaranteed Americans the free exercise of religion and nonbelief.

To buttress this viewpoint, I would note that the Constitution grants governments no powers in matters of religion. There are four provisions of the Constitutions which bare directly or indirectly on religion. Article VI prohibits a religious test for public office. The First Amendment prohibits Congress (and by incorporation the states) from acts respecting establishments of religion AND guarantees the free exercise of religion. And the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection of the laws (i.e., treat religions and nonbelief equally).

As I said at the beginning, the majority opinion by Justice Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito, is horrendous from a religious freedom perspective. I had little-to-no faith in these Christian dominionist justices. So I was not surprised by their pro-Christian position on legislative prayer.

However I was surprised and deeply disappointed by Justice Kagan’s opinion, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer and Sotomajor. I had hoped that they would throw a bone or crumb to nonbelievers – that they (or at least one or more of them) would opine that legislative prayer is inherently religious and, therefore, excessively entangles government with religion and discriminates against nonbelievers.

Marsh and now Greece should be overturned if nonbelievers are accorded full citizenship and equal dignity. Unfortunately, now in my mid-60s, I don’t expect this to occur during my lifetime. Shame, shame, shame on the Supreme Court of the United States for spoiling the dream of religious freedom.