Court says Christian prayers said in public meetings in Jackson County violated Constitution

A federal appeals court has stated that the practice of opening public meetings with Christian-only prayers in Jackson County, Michigan violated the U.S. Constitution by favoring one faith over others.

In a 2–1 decision, Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Peter Bormuth, a resident who described himself as a pagan and an animist, whose religious practices include worshipping the sun, the moon, the earth and ancestral spirits, The Washington Times reported.

Bormuth, who began attending Jackson County Board of Commissioners meetings in 2013 to discuss environmental issues, said in his lawsuit that he felt compelled to stand and participate in religion in order to speak to elected officials at the meetings.

One commissioner reportedly called him a "nitwit," and another board member said that his lawsuit was an "attack on Christianity and Jesus Christ."

He accused the board members of rejecting his nomination to its Solid Waste and Planning Committee because of his refusal to participate in the prayers.

The court stated that prayer invocations at public meetings can be legal, but it noted that the commissioners in Jackson County were the only ones who offered a prayer, not audience members, and the prayer was always Christian, not from other faiths.

"There is no distinction between the government and the prayer-giver: They are one and the same. The prayers, in Bormuth's words, are literally 'government speech,'" said judges Karen Nelson Moore and Jane Branstetter Stranch, according to the Associated Press.

The appeals court ruling reversed the decision by U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani in Detroit, who said that Bormuth was being "hypersensitive." The lower court argued that he was not forced to participate in the prayers, and he could have left the room if he did not feel comfortable.

Judge Richard A. Griffin, who dissented from the majority opinion, said the appeals court misapplied U.S. Supreme Court in public prayer.

"Contrary to today's decision, the Supreme Court has ruled twice that legislative prayer does not violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution," Griffin wrote.

He also noted that the board members delivered the prayer on a rotating basis regardless of religion and added that people of other faiths can be elected as a Commissioner in Jackson County.

"The religious faiths of the periodically elected officials — including Jackson County's Commissioners — are dynamic, not static," he stated.