In the town of Greece, New York, anyone attending town board meetings must first sit through a Christian prayer session.
That didn’t make many of the Jewish, Buddhist, Paga and Baha’I residents very happy, and they sued in 2008 to change the practice. You might be thinking: isn’t this an issue of church and state separation that the courts have already ruled on? Yes, but maybe not like you think. In 1983, the US Supreme Court answered the question in Marsh v. Chambers, in which a majority held up as constitutional a practice of praying before each Nebraska legislative session.
Daniel Mach, who is Director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, hopes the case of Greece v. Galloway will now overrule that decision. Here is our discussion:
