Rubin, et al v. City of Lancaster, No. 11-56318 (9th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs sued the City of Lancaster under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and Article I, Section 4 of the California Constitution, requesting declaratory and injunctive relief from the City's policy of permitting prayers that mention Jesus. Plaintiffs argued that both the invocation at issue and the City's prayer policy amounted to an establishment of religion. The invocation did not proselytize, advance, or disparage any faith. The court rejected plaintiffs' argument that the City, through its prayer practice, placed its official seal of approval on Christianity where the City has taken every feasible precaution to ensure its own evenhandedness. Therefore, the court held that the district court correctly determined that neither the invocation at issue nor the City's prayer policy constituted an unconstitutional establishment of religion. For the same reasons that plaintiffs' First Amendment claim failed, their state claim failed as well. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Civil Rights. The panel affirmed the district court’s bench trial judgment in favor of the City of Lancaster in plaintiffs’ 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging that the city council’s practice of opening its meetings with privately led prayers effected an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The panel analyzed the City’s policy and practice of soliciting volunteers from local congregations to lead the invocations regardless of the faith, denomination, or other religious belief of the congregation. The panel held that a Bishop’s single reference to Jesus in an invocation did not amount to a violation of the Establishment Clause. The panel applied the history-based analysis set forth in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), and concluded that neither the Supreme Court’s decision in Marsh, nor in County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989), categorically forbids sectarian references in legislative prayer so long as legislative prayer—whether sectarian or not—does not proselytize, advance, or disparage one religion or affiliate government with a particular faith. The panel also rejected plaintiffs’ contention that viewed in context, the City’s unwritten policy, practice and custom posed a First Amendment problem because the majority of city-council invocations have been Christian. The panel, focusing on the policy’s neutrality and the principle of private choice, not on the number of volunteers from a particular sect, saw nothing in the record or in the prayer policy to indicate that the City had affiliated itself with Christianity. The panel stated that the City did not choose the content of the prayers or the denomination of the prayer-givers and the fact that most of the invocations had been Christian was merely a function of local demographics and the choice of religious leaders who responded to the City’s invitation for volunteers.
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