Supreme Court denies Wiccan in prayer case

Posted: 10/19/05

Supreme Court denies Wiccan in prayer case

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The Supreme Court has turned away a Wiccan who sought to deliver prayers at a Virginia county’s board meetings on an equal basis with Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders.

The court declined to hear the case of Cynthia Simpson, formerly a resident of Chesterfield County, Va., Oct. 11. Simpson, a practitioner of the neo-pagan religion, had appealed an April decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In that ruling, a three-judge panel of the appellate court overturned a federal district judge’s finding that the county had acted unconstitutionally in allowing only prayers compatible with a “Judeo-Christian” concept of God. The lower court had agreed with Simpson’s argument that disallowing prayers from representatives of polytheistic or nontheistic religions violates the First Amendment.

At the time of the lawsuit, Simpson was a lay leader in a Wiccan congregation in the suburban county near Richmond. When she asked to be put on a list of those who could lead invocations at board meetings, the county attorney told her she would not be allowed, claiming, “Chesterfield’s nonsectarian invocations are traditionally made to a divinity that is consistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

In ruling against Simpson, the appeals court cited the Supreme Court’s 1985 Marsh vs. Chambers decision allowing “non-sectarian” legislative prayers before the Nebraska legislature. Judge Harvie Wilkinson, writing the 4th Circuit’s opinion, said the content of the prayers Chesterfield County officials allowed was broad enough, and Simpson’ being barred from offering one was immaterial to the case.

“The Judeo-Christian tradition is, after all, not a single faith but an umbrella covering many faiths,” Wilkinson wrote. “We need not resolve the parties’ dispute as to its precise extent, as Chesterfield County has spread it wide enough in this case to include Islam. For these efforts, the county should not be made the object of constitutional condemnation.”

The judge went on to say the Marsh decision means governments have a wide latitude in dealing with religious expression in legislative contexts without offending the First Amendment clause that prohibits government establishment of religion. Government discretion is broader in those situations, Wilkinson wrote, than when government officials are dealing with religion in other contexts—such as public schools.

Wilkinson continued: “The Chesterfield policy of clergy selection may not encompass as much as Simpson would like, and were it to be applied beyond the ‘unique’ and limited context of legislative prayer, it may not encompass as much as (another Supreme Court decision on government-sponsored prayers) would require. But that context is all important, for if Marsh means anything, it is that the establishment clause does not scrutinize legislative invocations with the same rigor that it appraises other religious activities.”

At the time, a Baptist expert on church-state issues said the appeals court had decided the case wrongly. “The clearest command of the establishment clause, and even fundamental fairness, is that the state must not prefer one religion over another,” said Brent Walker, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

He stood by that assessment Oct. 12, but he noted the high court’s decision not to reconsider the 4th Circuit’s ruling doesn’t mean they disagree with Simpson’s argument. “The court doesn’t hear the majority of appeals it gets,” he noted.

In Simpson’s case, as in most cases it declines, the high court did not comment on its reasons for refusing to hear the appeal. It takes four of the nine justices agreeing that an appeal raises issues that merit a hearing before it can go on the court’s docket.

Simpson, who reportedly no longer lives in Chesterfield County, said the decision saddened her nonetheless. “Of course I was disappointed,” she told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.