76% of voters in Lancaster, California said yes Tuesday to a ballot measure that continues the city's policy of opening council meetings with prayer. The referendum is non-binding, but emboldens a town that has received complaints over the sectarian nature of government invocations. Those complaints may turn into lawsuits soon, according to the ACLU's Peter Eliasburg:
Eliasberg said there is precedent for allowing nondenominational prayers at a public meeting, but that constitutional boundaries protecting religious freedom are crossed when such prayers almost always advocate a particular religion.
"We don't allow the voters to decide what's the official religion in the city of Lancaster," he said.
The controversy was fueled in part by [Mayor R. Rex] Parris' statement earlier this year that he was "growing a Christian community" in Lancaster. He later apologized, saying he realized his words had offended non-Christians.
Thankfully, as Eliasburg says, constitutional freedoms are not subject to a majority vote. Protecting the minority view is, in fact, part of the point. That being said, it's unclear whether a city policy like this one – which does allow for clergy of different faiths to offer the opening invocation – will be considered legal or not.
