David Williamson v. Brevard County ( 2019 )

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 17-15769
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 6:15-cv-01098-JA-DCI
DAVID WILLIAMSON,
CHASE HANSEL,
KEITH BECHER,
RONALD GORDON,
JEFFERY KOEBERL,
CENTRAL FLORIDA FREETHOUGHT COMMUNITY,
SPACE COAST FREETHOUGHT ASSOCIATION,
HUMANIST COMMUNITY OF THE SPACE COAST,
Plaintiffs - Counter Defendants - Appellees,
versus
BREVARD COUNTY,
Defendant - Counter Claimant - Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
________________________
(July 8, 2019)
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Before MARCUS, GRANT and HULL, Circuit Judges.
MARCUS, Circuit Judge:
Like many local governments, the Brevard County Board of County
Commissioners opens its meetings with a religious invocation. These opening
prayers are the subject of this litigation. A group of Secular Humanists and
atheists challenge them as violating the Establishment Clause, arguing that the
County has wrongfully barred them from offering invocations of their own.
Legislative prayers occupy a unique position in the framework of
Establishment Clause jurisprudence, primarily because, as the Supreme Court put
it, an “unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years” leaves “no
doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part
of the fabric of our society.” Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 792 (1983). The
invocation of Divine guidance in a public body charged with making laws is not a
“step toward establishment [of religion]; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment
of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.” Id. Even though the
government is generally prohibited from entangling itself in religious judgments or
promoting religious belief, our courts have repeatedly upheld prayer at the opening
of government meetings because of this long national tradition. Even sectarian
prayer, presented in the language of a particular sect and even addressed to a
particular deity, has been upheld as consonant with the Establishment Clause.
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Every step of the way, though, the courts have made clear that there are limits.
Thus, the opportunity for prayer at the start of a legislative session may not be
“exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or
belief.” Id. at 794–95. In this Circuit, we determine whether the opportunity has
been exploited by applying a three-factor test that considers the identity of the
invocation speakers, the process by which they are selected, and the nature of the
prayers they deliver. Atheists of Fla., Inc. v. City of Lakeland, 713 F.3d 577, 591
(11th Cir. 2013).
In this case, Brevard County has selected invocation speakers in a way that
favors certain monotheistic religions and categorically excludes from consideration
other religions solely based on their belief systems. Brevard County’s process of
selecting invocation speakers thus runs afoul of the Establishment Clause. As it
stands, members of the Brevard County Board of Commissioners have plenary
authority, on a rotating basis, to invite whomever they want to deliver invocations,
with no consistent standards or expectation of inclusiveness. From their testimony,
it is abundantly clear that most if not all of the Commissioners exercise their
discretion in a way that discriminates among religions based on their beliefs,
favoring some but not all monotheistic and familiar religious sects over those faiths
that fall outside the “mainstream.” Moreover, some religions are scrutinized by the
Commissioners more closely, and others are even categorically excluded from
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consideration. Secular humanists are far from the only group viewed with
disfavor. Thus, for example, some of the Commissioners and former
Commissioners have testified unambiguously that they would not allow deists,
Wiccans, Rastafarians, or, for that matter, polytheists to deliver prayers, and that
they would have to think long and hard before inviting a Hindu, a Sikh, or a
follower of a Native American religion. Nothing could be clearer from this record
than that more than a few of the Commissioners rejected speakers based squarely
on the nature of the religious beliefs they held.
The Resolution that the Commission passed in response to the plaintiffs’
requests to offer invocations only confirms our understanding that Brevard
County’s process of selecting invocation speakers is unconstitutional. As the
Resolution notes, “individual Board members have predominantly selected clerics
from monotheistic religions and denominations -- including Christian, Jewish and
Muslim -- to present the invocation.” But it does not stop there. The Resolution
adds that the Board “in recognition of the traditional positive role faith-based
monotheistic religions have historically played in the community,” typically offers
the cleric an opportunity to share upcoming events or other information about their
religious group before the invocation.
The discriminatory procedure for selecting invocation speakers followed in
Brevard County is unconstitutional and it must be rejected. As a result, we have no
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occasion to reach further constitutional questions, including whether atheists and
secular humanists must be allowed to deliver non-theistic invocations. Brevard
County’s current legislative prayer practices violate the command of the First
Amendment. We need go no further today than to say this: in selecting invocation
speakers, the Commissioners may not categorically exclude from consideration
speakers from a religion simply because they do not like the nature of its beliefs.
I.
Brevard County is a political subdivision of Florida. Its legislative and
governing body is the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners (“the
Board”). The Board has five members (“the Commissioners”), each elected from a
different single-member district. Its meetings are open to the public, carried live
on cable television, and streamed online. They typically begin each session with a
religious invocation. Other than the opening invocations, agenda items at Board
meetings are secular in nature (“with extremely rare exceptions,” we are told).
Invocation speakers are invited for the specific purpose of making an
opening prayer; they are typically volunteer clerics invited by staff members of the
Commissioners. The five Commissioners take turns inviting the speakers. The
work of contacting and scheduling speakers is generally done by County staff,
using County phones or email services and the staff are paid by the County.
Sometimes they have trouble finding someone to give the invocation so they fall
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back on holding a moment of silence instead. Commissioners and their staff do not
review drafts of the invocations before they are given. At meetings, the invocation
is usually the second item on the Board’s printed agenda, following the “Call to
Order.” Typically the Commissioner who has invited the speaker will make an
introduction, and the Board will ask the audience to stand “for a prayer and the
Pledge of Allegiance.”
All of the invocations given before the Brevard County Board from January
1, 2010 through March 15, 2016 had at least some theistic content. That is, they all
expressed a “belief in the existence of a god or gods.” Webster’s Third New
International Dictionary 2370 (2002) (“theism”). More than that, they all
contained specifically monotheistic content, meaning that they were in line with
“the doctrine or belief that there is but one God.” Id. at 1464 (“monotheism”).
During this roughly six-year period, invocations preceded 195 Board meetings.
All but seven of them were given by Christians or contained Christian content,
including five by Catholic clerics and one each by Latter-Day Saints and Eastern
Orthodox speakers. Of the seven non-Christian invocations, six were given by
Jewish Rabbis, and one was a “generally monotheistic” invocation given by an
Officer from the City of Melbourne in Brevard County. Often, but not always,
invocations are given by clerics who are leaders of their religious congregations.
Invocations have also been given by police officers, congressional staffers, a state
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judge, the Commissioners themselves, their staff, and a lay leader of the Church of
Latter-Day Saints.
The plaintiffs in this case are five individuals and three organizations. All
five individual plaintiffs -- David Williamson, Chase Hansel, Keith Becher, Ronald
Gordon, and Jeffery Koeberl -- identify as atheists and four of them also identify as
Secular Humanists; all of them live in Brevard County, except for one who lives in
Seminole County. According to the American Humanism Association,
“Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other
supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of
personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.” Amended
Stipulation of Facts Regarding Cross-Motions for Summary Judgment (“ASOF”),
Doc. 83 at ¶ 86. Three of the Secular Humanist plaintiffs have been ordained as
humanist clergy by the Humanist Society. The parties agree that the plaintiffs’
beliefs “are strongly held and very important to them, having a place in their lives
equal to the significance that theistic beliefs have in the lives of Christians, Jews,
and adherents of other monotheistic faiths.” Id. at ¶ 91. They also agree that “[a]ll
the individual plaintiffs view their atheistic or Humanist beliefs as a ‘religion’ as
defined under the law” and for Establishment Clause purposes. Id. at ¶ 92.
In 2014, plaintiff David Williamson sent the Board two letters on letterhead
from the Central Florida Freethought Community (“CFFC”) -- one in May, and
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one in July. The first explained that the CFFC was “a local educational
organization of more than two hundred members” and that “[o]ne of the
organization’s objectives is to educate the public on the need for equal treatment of
non-believers and the value of Humanism; a world view which relies on reason and
science as the best decision-making tools humankind has at its disposal.” Doc. 55-
6 at 66. The letter cited recent Supreme Court precedent requiring, in
Williamson’s view, that “a government’s prayer practice must be
‘nondiscriminatory’ and it must make reasonable efforts to include invocations
from all members of the community, regardless of their faith,” and cited cases in
which humanism had been treated as a religion under the First Amendment. Id.
“Therefore,” Williamson wrote, “we respectfully request the opportunity to
offer invocations at your meetings.” Id. (emphasis in original). The second
letter noted that the Board had failed to respond to the first one, and repeated the
same arguments at greater length, concluding with a “demand that Brevard County
permit a member of [the Central Florida Freethought Community] to deliver an
invocation.” See id. at 69–71.
In August of 2014, the Board responded explaining the purpose and tradition
of invocations before Board meetings and telling the CFFC and Williamson that
their proposal would not fit within the County Commission’s tradition. The
response read, in part, this way:
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The invocation portion of the agenda is an opening prayer presented by
members of our faith community. The prayer is delivered during the
ceremonial portion of the County’s meeting and typically invokes
guidance for the County Commission from the highest spiritual
authority, a higher authority which a substantial body of Brevard
constituents believe to exist. The invocation is also meant to lend
gravity to the occasion, to reflect values long part of the Country’s
heritage and to acknowledge the place religion holds in the lives of
many private citizens in Brevard County.
Your website leads us to understand your organization and its members
do not share those beliefs or values which, of course, is your choice
under the laws of the United States. . . .
You or your Brevard members have the opportunity to speak for three
minutes on any subject involving County business during the Public
Comment portion of our meeting. . . . As a practical matter, there are
no restrictions on what is said during those three minutes. . . . During
that segment, members of your organization are free to speak their
views and beliefs, or even a closing supplication.
Doc. 55-6 at 86–87.
Over the course of the next year, various humanists, atheists, and outside
groups with interests in the issue communicated with the Board. Plaintiff Ronald
Gordon exchanged emails with Commissioner Trudie Infantini informing her that
he was an atheist and offering to give an invocation. Reverend Ann Fuller, a
humanist community minister associated with the Unitarian Universalist Church of
Brevard, likewise offered to give an invocation. The Anti-Defamation League sent
a letter to the Board expressing concern with its policies; the Board responded with
a letter rejecting the suggestion that it ought to allow a humanist invocation:
“[Y]our suggestion to allow atheists to provide the invocation would, in fact, show
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hostility toward the faith-based community . . . .” Americans United for
Separation of Church and State (“AU”) sent two letters, in January and May 2015,
cosigned in each instance by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (“FFRF”),
the ACLU, and the ACLU of Florida.
The Board responded by adopting a resolution, Resolution 2015-101, on
July 7, 2015: “A Resolution of the Brevard County Board of County
Commissioners . . . Adopting A Formal Policy Relating to Traditional Ceremonial
Pre-Meeting Prayer” (“the Resolution”). Doc. 55-7; see also ASOF ¶ 131. The
Resolution began by noting the requests the Board had received and by observing
that the Board had not adopted a formal policy relating to pre-meeting prayer. The
Board chose to codify a policy that was “not hostile to faith-based religions and
[did] not endorse secular humanism or non-belief over traditional faith-based
religions comprised of constituents who believe in God.” Doc. 55-7 at 3.
The bulk of the Resolution’s text comes in its “findings” section, which first
recounts the County’s tradition of pre-meeting invocations and provides some
demographic data, but then proceeds to scrutinize the websites of the FFRF, AU,
and CFFC. The Resolution highlights so-called “Godless quotes” posted on the
organizations’ sites, the organizations’ stated goals concerning the separation of
church and state, and, for CFFC, its “strategic[]” attempts at “offend[ing] faith-
based religions in open forums in order to pressure the local government into
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closing the forum or censoring the content and exposing itself to liability.” Id. at
3–10. The Resolution offers that allowing the humanists and atheists to speak only
during the public comment period “reflects a longstanding practice of the Board to
provide a limited public forum under the Public Comment section,” which is not
subject to censorship. Id. at 11.
The Resolution presented a series of “conclusions” based on its findings,
including that: “supplanting traditional ceremonial pre-meeting prayer . . . with an
‘invocation’ by atheists, agnostics or other persons represented by or associated
with FFRF and [AU] could be viewed as County hostility toward monotheistic
religions” because “displacing representatives of the minority faith-based
monotheistic community . . . could be viewed as . . . Board endorsement of Secular
Humanist and Atheist principles.” Id. at 11–12. This was the case, the Board said,
because of “the overwhelmingly secular nature of the Board’s business meeting
following the invocation” and because of “evidence suggesting that the requesting
organizations are engaged in nothing more than a carefully orchestrated plan to
promote or advance principles of Secular Humanism through the displacement or
elimination of ceremonial deism traditionally provided by monotheistic clerics
giving pre-meeting prayer.” Id. at 12.
Finally, the Resolution adopted an amendment governing opening
invocations:
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Secular invocations and supplications from any organization whose
precepts, tenets or principles espouse or promote reason, science,
environmental factors, nature or ethics as guiding forces, ideologies,
and philosophies that should be observed in the secular business or
secular decision making process involving Brevard County employees,
elected officials, or decision makers including the Board of County
Commissioners, fall within the current policies pertaining to Public
Comment and must be placed on the Public Comment section of the
secular business agenda. Pre-meeting invocations shall continue to be
delivered by persons from the faith-based community in perpetuation
of the Board’s tradition for over forty years.
Id. at 12–13. Thus, as stipulated by the parties, the Resolution “adopted a formal
policy that allows the traditional faith-based invocation prior to the beginning of
the Board’s secular business agenda and subsequent ‘secular invocations’ during
the Public Comment section of that secular agenda.” ASOF ¶ 133 (quotations
omitted).
This lawsuit was filed in the Middle District of Florida the same day the
Board passed Resolution 2015-101, and the complaint was amended the following
month to add details about the Resolution itself. The Amended Complaint raised
six claims, alleging violations of the First Amendment’s Establishment, Free
Speech, and Free Exercise Clauses (Counts I, II, and III); the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause (Count IV); and the Equal Protection and
Establishment Clauses of the Florida Constitution (Count V and VI). The
Amended Complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief, along with damages,
fees, and costs. After extensive discovery, both sides moved for summary
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judgment. On September 30, 2017, the district court entered an order granting
summary judgment to the plaintiffs on almost every issue -- technically granting in
part and denying in part both motions, but awarding a clear victory to the plaintiffs.
The district court’s opinion began with the Establishment Clause. For
starters, it found for the plaintiffs on the theory that the County had engaged in
purposeful religious discrimination. The court concluded that the Establishment
Clause requires members of all sects to be invited to offer invocations. The
Brevard County Board, however, unlawfully limited the opportunity to pray “based
on the beliefs of the would-be prayer giver.” The trial court ruled similarly that the
prayer regime authorized by the County wrongfully entangled the Commissioners
in making religious judgments based on the belief systems of various religions.
As for the Free Exercise claim, again the district court found for the
plaintiffs. By allowing invocations only by volunteers who believed in “a higher
power,” the court reasoned, the County created a religious test for participation in
government affairs, thereby violating the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the
Free Exercise Clause. As for the Free Speech claim, the trial court again ruled in
favor of the plaintiffs because they were denied the opportunity to participate in a
government activity on account of their beliefs or affiliations. As for Equal
Protection, the plaintiffs also succeeded because the County treated its citizens
differently on account of their religious beliefs without a “compelling” reason for
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doing so. The court rejected Brevard County’s claim that by allowing a humanist
invocation it would necessarily have evinced hostility toward religion. The
plaintiff’s Equal Protection claim raised under the Florida Constitution prevailed
for much the same rationale; and their Florida Establishment Clause claim
succeeded in large measure for the same reasons they prevailed on the federal
Establishment Clause claim. 1
The district court also entered a declaratory judgment that the County’s
policy violated the Establishment, Free Exercise, Free Speech, and Equal
Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution and the Establishment and Equal
Protection Clauses of the Florida Constitution. Finally, the trial court permanently
enjoined the enforcement of the County’s regime including its policies found in
Resolution 2015-101. If the County were to continue the practice of opening its
meetings with an invocation, it was required by the trial court to adopt a new
policy allowing each of the plaintiffs the opportunity to make a secular invocation
1
The district court ruled, however, that the plaintiffs’ Florida Establishment Clause claim failed
in part. Florida’s Constitution contains a “no-aid provision” not found in the federal
Establishment Clause. Florida’s Blaine Amendment, as it was commonly known, provides
among other things that “[n]o revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof
shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or
religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.” Fla. Const. art. I, § 3. The
plaintiffs had argued that the County was using tax dollars to fund the invocation practice in
violation of this constitutional bar, but the district court found only “incidental” costs and
insufficient evidence supporting the claim. Thus, summary judgment was granted to the County.
However, the plaintiffs have dropped their appeal of the district court’s ruling on this aspect of
their Florida Establishment Clause claim.
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and, indeed, to allow each individual plaintiff to deliver an invocation within
fifteen months. 2
This timely appeal followed.
2
To be more precise, the district court ordered the following injunctive relief:
6. Based on the foregoing, the Court hereby issues a permanent injunction:
a. prohibiting the County from continuing the unconstitutional invocation
practices set forth in Brevard County Board of County Commissioners (“Board”)
Resolution 2015-101. Specifically, the County may not:
(i) require theistic content in opening invocations; or
(ii) “impose[] a categorical ban on Plaintiffs and other nontheists as
givers of opening invocations at its Board meetings” (Order at 34) or
otherwise discriminate against Plaintiffs or other nontheists in selecting
speakers to deliver opening invocations at Board meetings.
b. mandating that, if the County continues opening its Board meetings with
invocations, its invocation practices and any new invocation policy that it may
adopt shall:
(i) conform with the principles set forth in this Final Judgment;
(ii) provide the Individual Plaintiffs (David Williamson, Chase
Hansel, Keith Becher, Ronald Gordon, and Jeffery Koeberl) and
representatives of the Organizational Plaintiffs (Central Florida Freethought
Community, Space Coast Freethought Association, and Humanist
Community of the Space Coast) with opportunities to deliver secular
opening invocations at Board meetings on a schedule that is equivalent to
that afforded to individuals and organizational representatives delivering
religious opening invocations; and (iii) ensure that each of the Individual
Plaintiffs receives a reasonable opportunity to deliver an opening invocation
at a Board meeting within fifteen months of the later of (1) the date of entry
of this Final Judgment; or (2) if the Board temporarily refrains from opening
its meetings with invocations starting with the date of entry of this Final
Judgment, the date upon which the Board resumes opening its meetings
with invocations. After each Individual Plaintiff delivers his initial opening
invocation, however, nothing in this Final Judgment shall be construed to
require the County to schedule him to deliver opening invocations every
fifteen months; instead, the schedule for any subsequent opening invocation
by any Plaintiff shall be set in accordance with subsection 6(b)(ii) above.
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II.
“We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same
standard as the district court. In conducting this analysis, we view all of the
evidence in a light most favorable to the nonmoving party and draw all reasonable
inferences in that party’s favor. Summary judgment is appropriate where ‘there is
no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as
a matter of law’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). The movant bears the burden of presenting
pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together
with the affidavits, if any that establish the absence of any genuine, material factual
dispute.” Procaps S.A. v. Patheon, Inc., 845 F.3d 1072, 1079 (11th Cir. 2016)
(citations and quotations omitted). Where the record taken as a whole could not
lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no genuine
issue for trial. Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574,
587 (1986). We review the grant of injunctive relief for abuse of discretion. Fla.
Ass’n of Rehab. Facilities, Inc. v. State of Fla. Dep’t of Health & Rehab. Servs.,
225 F.3d 1208, 1216 (11th Cir. 2000).
III.
A.
The Establishment Clause decrees that “Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion,” but we have struggled mightily over the
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years to explain just what these words mean. U.S. CONST. amend. I; see Everson v.
Bd. of Ed. of Ewing Twp., 330 U.S. 1, 15 (1947) (incorporating the clause against
the states via the Fourteenth Amendment). The Supreme Court has moved away
from attempting to divine “a grand unified theory” of the clause, in favor of “a
more modest approach that focuses on the particular issue at hand and looks to
history for guidance.” Am. Legion v. Am. Humanist Ass’n, No. 17-1717, 2019
WL 2527471, at *16 (U.S. June 20, 2019) (plurality opinion). Justice Alito,
writing for four Justices, has said its cases “involving prayer before a legislative
session are an example” of this approach. Id.
We know that “[t]he clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that
one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” Larson v.
Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982). To that end, the Supreme Court has long
“adhered to the principle, clearly manifested in the history and logic of the
Establishment Clause, that no State can ‘pass laws which aid one religion’ or that
‘prefer one religion over another.’” Id. at 246 (quoting Everson, 330 U.S. at 15).
Simply stated, “[t]he government must be neutral when it comes to competition
between sects.” Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 314 (1952); see also Epperson
v. State of Ark., 393 U.S. 97, 103–04 (1968).
This “principle of denominational neutrality” is a central requirement of the
Establishment Clause. Larson, 456 U.S. at 246. At the same time, though, we
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know that the Establishment Clause does not require that the state extirpate all
references to religion or religious symbols from the public life of this nation.
Thus, for example, most recently the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a
Christian cross that had stood on public land as a World War I memorial since
1925. Am. Legion, 2019 WL 2527471, at *4. In fact, such public practices as the
First Congress’s invocation of the “Almighty God” in its resolution urging the
proclamation of a day of Thanksgiving, the display of the Ten Commandments in
the south frieze of the Supreme Court’s courtroom, and countless other examples
of religious ornamentation in public buildings suggest that the Establishment
Clause must be read in a manner tolerant of religious expression in public life. See
Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 686–690 (2005) (Rehnquist, J.) (plurality
opinion)).
Most significantly for our purposes, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of
the Establishment Clause has expressly permitted the longstanding practice of
opening a legislative session with a prayer. The First Congress chose in 1789 to
begin its sessions with a prayer in order “to solemnize congressional meetings,
[and] unify[] those in attendance as they pursued a common goal of good
governance.” Am. Legion, 2019 WL 2527471, at *17 (plurality opinion). “The
passage of time gives rise to a strong presumption of constitutionality,” id. at *15,
so the unbroken practice of legislative prayer since the early days of the republic is
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the starting point of our analysis. Since Marsh v. Chambers, 473 U.S. 783 (1983),
legislative prayer has been treated differently in no small measure on account of its
long history and has been found to be constitutional in most cases. Marsh
presented the first opportunity for the Court to consider legislative prayer, in the
context of “whether the Nebraska Legislature’s practice of opening each legislative
day with a prayer by a chaplain paid by the States violate[d] the Establishment
Clause.” Marsh, 463 U.S. at 784. It did not, the Court said, in large part because
“historical evidence sheds light not only on what the draftsmen intended the
Establishment Clause to mean, but also on how they thought that Clause applied”
to legislative prayer, “[a] practice authorized by the First Congress.” Id. at 790.
Thus, the Court upheld legislative prayer “without subjecting the practice to ‘any
of the formal “tests” that have traditionally structured’ [an Establishment Clause]
inquiry.” Town of Greece v. Galloway, 134 S. Ct. 1811, 1818 (2014) (quoting
Marsh, 463 U.S. at 796 (Brennan, J., dissenting)).
The Supreme Court explained in Marsh that “[f]rom colonial times through
the founding of the Republic and ever since, the practice of legislative prayer has
coexisted with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.” Marsh,
463 U.S. at 786. The First Congress “authorized the appointment of paid
chaplains” the same week that they agreed on the language of the First
Amendment, and even James Madison, “one of the principal advocates of religious
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freedom in the Colonies and a drafter of the Establishment Clause” voted in favor
of hiring these chaplains. Id. at 788 & n.8. “Clearly,” the Court resolved, “the
men who wrote the First Amendment Religion Clauses did not view paid
legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that Amendment”; and,
indeed, “the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without
interruption ever since.” Id. at 788. “This unique history” of legislative prayer
dating to the Founding led the Court “to accept the interpretation of the First
Amendment draftsmen who saw no real threat to the Establishment Clause arising
from a practice of prayer similar to” what was being challenged in Marsh. Id. at
791. The Court concluded “that legislative prayer presents no more potential for
establishment than the provision of school transportation, beneficial grants for
higher education, or tax exemptions for religious organizations.” Id. (citations
omitted).
Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Burger ended the Court’s general
discussion of legislative prayer this way:
In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200
years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative
sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To
invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the
laws is not, in these circumstances, an “establishment” of religion or a
step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of
beliefs widely held among the people of this country. As Justice
Douglas observed, “[w]e are a religious people whose institutions
presuppose a Supreme Being.”
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Id. at 792 (quoting Zorach, 343 U.S. at 313).
Turning then to the Nebraska Legislature’s practices, the Court identified
three salient details: a Presbyterian clergyman had been hired to deliver prayers
regularly; he was paid from the public fisc; and the prayers were “in the Judeo-
Christian tradition.” Id. at 793. This minister had made explicitly Christian
prayers, but, for the past few years, he made an effort to be “nonsectarian,” and not
to reference Christ specifically. Id. at 793 n.14. The Court saw no cause for
concern since it did not think “that choosing a clergyman of one denomination
advances the beliefs of a particular church.” Id. at 793. Indeed, the evidence
showed that it was “his performance and personal qualities,” not his
Presbyterianism, that motivated his retention. Id.
The Court went further in Town of Greece v. Galloway, 134 S. Ct. 1811
(2014), explicitly permitting sectarian prayer. Greece, New York, had an informal
method of selecting volunteer prayer-givers to open town board meetings, which
entailed calling up congregations and, eventually, working from a list of chaplains
who had done it before. Id. at 1816. “The town at no point excluded or denied an
opportunity to a would-be prayer giver” and “[i]ts leaders maintained that a
minister or layperson of any persuasion, including an atheist, could give the
invocation.” Id. Nonetheless, all of the participating ministers from 1999 to 2007
had been Christian, a reflection of the fact that nearly all the congregations in town
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were Christian. Id. The two plaintiffs had attended town board meetings and took
issue with the “distinctly Christian idiom” used in pre-meeting prayers. Id. at
1816–17. After one of the plaintiffs raised the issue with the board, “a Jewish
layman and the chairman of the local Baha’i temple” were invited to give opening
prayers, and a “Wiccan priestess” requested and was granted an opportunity as
well. Id. at 1817. Notwithstanding the increasing diversity of the prayers, the
plaintiffs sued, alleging that Greece had violated the Establishment Clause by
“preferring Christians over other prayer givers and by sponsoring sectarian prayers,
such as those given ‘in Jesus’ name.’” Id. They sought “an injunction that would
limit the town to ‘inclusive and ecumenical’ prayers that referred only to a ‘generic
God’ and would not associate the government with any one faith or belief.” Id.
This presented a new question for the Court: whether prayer that reflected
the language and beliefs of a specific religion -- typically Christianity -- “fit[]
within the tradition long followed in Congress and the state legislatures,” which
Marsh had endorsed. Id. at 1819. In Marsh, the chaplain had characterized his
prayers as “nonsectarian” and “Judeo Christian,” and the Court had no occasion to
consider the content of the prayers. Marsh, 463 U.S. at 793 n.14, 794–95.
In Galloway, the Court determined that sectarian prayer was consistent with
the First Amendment. See Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1820. “Marsh [had] nowhere
suggested that the constitutionality of legislative prayer turns on the neutrality of
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its content.” Id. at 1821. Once again, the Court relied heavily on historical
antecedents in giving meaning to the Establishment Clause. It explained “that the
Establishment Clause must be interpreted ‘by reference to historical practices and
understandings’ and that the decision of the First Congress to ‘provid[e] for the
appointment of chaplains only days after approving language for the First
Amendment demonstrates that the Framers considered legislative prayer a benign
acknowledgment of religion’s role in society.’” Am. Legion, 2019 WL 2527471,
at *16 (plurality opinion) (quoting Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1811). The Court
specifically noted that sectarian prayers had been accepted, and that today,
Congress “acknowledges our growing diversity not by proscribing sectarian
content but by welcoming ministers of many creeds,” like Buddhism, Judaism,
Islam, and Hinduism. Id. at 1820–21. The challengers wanted prayers addressed
“only to a generic God,” but, “[t]he law and the Court could not draw this line.”
Id. at 1822. The Court explained that “even seemingly general references to God
or the Father might alienate nonbelievers or polytheists.” Id. Perfectly inclusive
prayer was unrealistic, the Court said, and it would be “unwise to adopt” the
plaintiffs’ “next-best option” of allowing only generic prayer that was “acceptable
to the majority, even if [it would] exclude some.” Id. This kind of rule would
make the First Amendment “a majority rule,” would turn courts into “supervisors
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and censors of religious speech” and “would involve government in religious
matters to a far greater degree.” Id.
Before Galloway was decided, two panels of this Court had reached the
same conclusion -- that sectarian prayer was permitted -- and had worked out a
clear doctrinal structure with which to evaluate legislative prayer cases. In
Pelphrey v. Cobb County, 547 F.3d 1263 (11th Cir. 2008) and again in Atheists of
Florida, Inc. v. City of Lakeland, 713 F.3d 577 (11th Cir. 2013), we considered
challenges brought against local governments that opened their meetings with
sectarian prayers -- again, mostly Christian in both instances. See Atheists of Fla.,
713 F.3d at 582–83; Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1267–68. Unlike in today’s case, the
plaintiffs in those cases did not ask for permission to give opening prayers
themselves; they were simply challenging the then-current regimes. We upheld the
prayer regime in Atheists of Florida. 713 F.3d at 596. We likewise upheld the
then-current practice in Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1277–78, but also determined that an
earlier practice in Cobb County, Georgia had been unconstitutional, id. at 1278–
1279.
Both cases required us to review what Marsh had to say about the outer
limits of permissible prayer practices. In Marsh, the Court told us that “[t]he
content of the prayer is not of concern to judges where, as here, there is no
indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to proselytize or advance
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any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief.” Marsh, 463 U.S. at 794–95.
Galloway would later rely on this same language. See Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at
1821–22 (quoting this language from Marsh). To determine whether “the prayer
opportunity has been exploited” in violation of Marsh, we developed a three-factor
test, derived from the district court’s analysis in Pelphrey. See Pelphrey, 547 F.3d
at 1277–78. We would consider first “the identity of the invocational speakers,”
then “the selection procedures employed” and finally “the nature of the prayers.”
Id.
We found no problem with the identities of the speakers in Pelphrey or in
Atheists of Florida, even though the facts of both cases had revealed a
predominantly Christian set of prayer-givers. In Pelphrey we ruled that this was
acceptable because, notwithstanding the Christian majority, Jewish, Unitarian, and
Muslim speakers had also given invocations and the speakers had represented “a
wide cross-section of the County’s religious leaders.” Id. at 1277. In Atheists of
Florida, we discerned no constitutional problem because using “primarily but not
exclusively Christian” speakers “reflect[ed] the religious makeup of Lakeland and
the surrounding county” -- again a Jewish cantor and a Muslim Imam had also
given invocations. Atheists of Fla., 713 F.3d at 592.
The second factor -- selection procedures -- has required analysis of more
complicated facts. In Pelphrey, the then-current speaker-selection procedures did
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not betray any impermissible motive. The County had “compiled the list of
potential speakers from various sources and included diverse religious institutions,
including a mosque and three synagogues.” Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1278. These
included “the Yellow Pages, the internet, and business cards,” and speakers for
each week were selected at random. Id. at 1267. The county administrator in
charge of choosing from the list “testified that she did not exclude religious
institutions based on their beliefs.” Id. at 1278. In Atheists of Florida, we could
find no constitutional problem with a similar selection procedure that involved
finding congregations in the Yellow Pages and online along with allowing
overlooked congregations to apply and with consulting the local chamber of
commerce. Atheists of Fla., 713 F.3d at 592.
Not every procedure we’ve considered, however, has passed constitutional
muster. In Pelphrey we also held that a selection procedure employed for some
time by the Cobb County Planning Commission violated the Establishment Clause.
Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1282. This Commission drew invitees from entries for
“Churches” in a particular phone book. Id. at 1267. But someone had drawn “a
long and continuous line” through certain subcategories of Churches, “including
‘Churches–Islamic,’ ‘Churches–Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ ‘Churches–Jewish,’ and
‘Churches–Latter Day Saints.’” Id. at 1282. No representatives of these faiths had
been invited to speak during the time period that this particular phone book was
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being used. Id. We affirmed the district court’s determination that this
“categorical exclusion of certain faiths based on their beliefs [was]
unconstitutional.” Id.
We did not have any reason to analyze the third factor -- the content of the
prayers -- in either Pelphrey or Atheists of Florida. In Pelphrey, we declined to
evaluate the prayers’ content because “there [was] no clear error in the findings
that the prayers . . . were not exploited to advance one faith or belief.” Id. at 1278.
In Atheists of Florida, we likewise noted that no evidence of prayers that advanced
or disparaged a religion was presented and declined to review the content of the
prayers. Atheists of Fla., 713 F.3d at 592–93. In both instances, we highlighted
the Supreme Court’s strong caution that the courts ought to avoid becoming
involved in reviewing or approving specific prayers. See id. at 592 (“[I]t is not for
us to embark on a sensitive evaluation or to parse the content of a particular
prayer.” (quoting Marsh, 463 U.S. at 795)); Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1278 (“The
federal judiciary has no business in ‘composing official prayers . . . to recite as any
part of a religious program carried on by government . . . .’” (quoting Lee v.
Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 588 (1992))).
Galloway was decided after our decisions in Pelphrey and Atheists of
Florida. It tended to confirm our reading of Marsh and was entirely consistent with
the principles animating our three-factor test. Like our decisions, Galloway
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allowed a rotating set of volunteer invocation-givers that primarily came from one
sect -- Christianity -- “[s]o long as the town maintain[ed] a policy of
nondiscrimination.” Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1824. Galloway also noted that the
town had made “reasonable efforts to identify all of the congregations located
within its borders” and welcomed them. Id. The “policy of nondiscrimination”
that Galloway required can be found by looking, as we had, to the procedures by
which the prayer-givers are selected. As we had suggested, Galloway says that the
courts should avoid scrutinizing the content of prayers, but that the content may
matter “[i]f the course and practice over time shows that the invocations denigrate
nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion.”
Id. at 1823; see id. at 1822–23. So long as prayers are arranged and delivered in
nondiscriminatory ways, explicitly sectarian prayer “serves [the] legitimate
function” of “lend[ing] gravity to the occasion and reflect[ing] values long part of
the Nation’s heritage.” Id. at 1823.
The state of our law, then, is clear at least about this much: local
governments have significant freedom to conduct legislative prayers at the start of
their sessions, even prayers that are explicitly sectarian and predominantly
Christian. They may even employ a single cleric from only one denomination to
deliver their invocations. But there is an exception to this: local governments
violate the Constitution if they organize and conduct their prayers in a way that
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discriminates against other religious beliefs. The three-factor test drawn from
Pelphrey is our Circuit’s method of reviewing legislative prayer regimes for
discrimination, and, so far, only one regime has failed the test -- the Cobb County
Planning Commission’s discontinued practice of drawing speakers from a list that
“categorically excluded specific faiths.” Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1282.
B.
Turning to the facts of this case, we agree with the district court that Brevard
County’s method of selecting invocation speakers, as evinced by Resolution 2015-
101 and by extensive deposition testimony taken from its County Commissioners,
is in violation of the Establishment Clause. We do not share the entirety of the
district court’s reasoning, which used Pelphrey’s three-factor test only in the
broadest sense, and which reached further difficult constitutional questions that
need not be answered for the resolution of this case. We review legal
determinations in a summary judgment order de novo, see Procaps S.A., 845 F.3d
at 1079, and we review the district court’s decision by re-applying the governing
principles we set out in Pelphrey. Just like in Pelphrey and Atheists of Florida, we
can discern no constitutional problem with the identities of the speakers selected,
and we have no occasion to review the content of the prayers actually given. The
County’s process of selecting invocation speakers, though, has run afoul of the
Establishment Clause.
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To begin with the simpler factors, the identities of the prayer-givers, viewed
in relation to the community’s religious demographics, appear consistent with what
we have approved in the past. Of the 195 invocations given between 2010 and
early 2016, there were 188 by Christians, six by Jews, and one that was “generally
monotheistic.” We have found no Establishment Clause problems presented when
local governments mostly invited Christian volunteer invocation-givers, so long as
this was reasonably reflective of the community’s demographics and did not
advance a single faith. See Atheists of Fla., 713 F.3d at 592; Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at
1277. On that score, the parties’ Amended Stipulation of Facts cites to data
collected by the Association of Religious Data Archives (“ARDA”). This data
shows that, out of 414 congregations in Brevard County, over 350 are Christian.
Inviting, as we’ve suggested, “a wide cross-section of the County’s religious
leaders” would, therefore, result in primarily Christian prayers. 3 See Pelphrey, 547
F.3d at 1277 (quoting Simpson v. Chesterfield Cty. Bd. of Supervisors, 404 F.3d
276, 285 (4th Cir. 2005)).
And just like in Pelphrey and Atheists of Florida, we have no occasion to
engage the third factor of the test -- the content of the prayers. “In Pelphrey, this
3
ARDA data do not include any of the Secular Humanist congregations discussed in this lawsuit.
There has been no suggestion, however, that more than a few such groups exist in Brevard
County. The cross-section of religious leaders would still be overwhelmingly Christian even if
they had been included.
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Court stated that ‘we read Marsh . . . to forbid judicial scrutiny of the content of
prayers absent evidence that the legislative prayers have been exploited to advance
or disparage a religion.’” Atheists of Fla., 713 F.3d at 592 (quoting Pelphrey, 547
F.3d at 1274). Moreover, the plaintiffs have not so much as even suggested that
the prayers offered regularly disparaged or proselytized particular belief systems.
Galloway explains that the content of legislative prayers is only a problem when
the government allows “a pattern of prayers that over time denigrate, proselytize,
or betray an impermissible government purpose.” 134 S. Ct. at 1824. In
Galloway, there were moments of concern during a few invocations. Id. (“One
guest minister characterized objectors as a ‘minority’ who are ‘ignorant of the
history of our country,’ while another lamented that other towns did not have
‘God-fearing’ leaders.”). The Court said that “[a]lthough these two remarks
strayed from the rationale set out in Marsh, they [did] not despoil a practice that on
the whole reflects and embraces our tradition.” Id. The plaintiffs here have not
even alleged this much, since their argument lies elsewhere, and so we have even
less reason to look at the content of the prayers given in Brevard County.
This leaves the second factor -- the selection procedures -- for analysis. For
starters, Brevard County lacks any sort of written policy, comprehensive or
otherwise, describing how volunteer invocation-givers are selected. Resolution
2015-101 tells us something, but not much, about how the process works; the
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deposition testimony of seven current and former Commissioners tells us more. A
careful review of the Resolution and the testimony makes clear that the Board’s
procedures for inviting speakers to give invocations cannot be squared with the
Establishment Clause because the current practice reposes in each of the
Commissioners plenary discretion, which they have used to discriminate on the
basis of religious beliefs, favoring some monotheistic religions over others and
disfavoring and excluding -- at least -- religions that are polytheistic, pantheistic, or
otherwise outside of the “mainstream.” 4 Moreover, some of the Commissioners
set a higher bar, if not an insurmountable one, for religions that they were
unfamiliar with or for those that they knew of but did not particularly like or
prefer. This is plainly at odds with the core of the Establishment Clause -- neither
the states nor the federal government may favor one religious denomination over
another. Larson, 456 U.S. at 244.
As a starting point, we can look to Resolution 2015-101, which suggests
favoritism for monotheistic religions, and only some of them at that, and sets no
standards or regimented procedures for Commissioners to follow as they invite
invocation speakers. In precious little detail, the Resolution reveals that “a
ceremonial invocation in the form of a short prayer” has been given before Brevard
4
We do not say anything one way or the other about Secular Humanism or other non-theistic
belief systems. See infra Part IV.
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County Board meetings for at least forty-four years, and says that “individual
Board members” select speakers “[o]n a rotating basis.” Resolution at 1–2. The
parties’ Amended Stipulation of Facts confirms that “Commissioners’ offices take
turns inviting speakers, following a rotation system.” While the Resolution says
nothing further about the selection procedures, the Resolution is explicit in its
preference for monotheistic religions. It says that clerics giving invocations are
“typically” afforded the opportunity to speak about their organizations and
explains that this exchange occurs, “in recognition of the traditional positive role
faith-based monotheistic religions have historically played in the community.”
Resolution at 2 (emphasis added). Again, this suggests a more favorable attitude
toward monotheistic religions than toward others.
At the end of the Resolution, the Board codifies a new policy. Leaving
altogether to one side, for the moment, the plaintiffs’ humanist belief systems, the
plain language of this section of the Resolution facially discriminates between
religions. It bars “[s]ecular invocations and supplications from any organization
whose precepts, tenets or principles espouse or promote” not just “reason” and
“science” but also “environmental factors, nature” and even “ethics.” Id. at 10. At
the very least, “environmental factors” and “nature” play a significant role in
shaping some traditional Native American religions, not to mention some newer
religions like Wicca. “Ethics” is an even more curious inclusion. Many if not
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most religions -- including Christianity and Judaism -- place “ethics” among their
basic “precepts, tenets or principles.”
Since the Resolution contains so few details about the actual procedures of
selecting invocation speakers, we must turn to the deposition testimony provided
by the Commissioners. Their testimony is illuminating; it reflects that the
members put into practice the monotheistic preference endorsed in their written
Resolution, and shows that members of the Board had no standards to apply, and
minimal procedures to follow, as they invited speakers to give invocations.
Moreover, their testimony reveals quite starkly that many members of the Board
exercised this plenary discretion in plainly unconstitutional ways.
Turning to the record is nothing out of the ordinary in legislative prayer
cases. In Pelphrey, too, we looked to County employees’ testimony to discern the
selection procedures in the absence of a written policy. Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at
1267–68; see also, e.g., Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1824 (providing examples, from
the record, of prayers delivered in the Town of Greece); Marsh, 463 U.S. at 793
n.14 (citing the Chaplain’s deposition testimony). In all, seven Commissioners
were deposed in this case. Five of them were the Commissioners who passed
Resolution 2015-101 in the summer of 2015, and the two others had served on the
Board in the preceding year, during the relevant period when some of the plaintiffs
were communicating with Board members about giving invocations. Each of the
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Commissioners was asked about the purpose of the invocation practice and,
notably, about how the selection process worked, both in general and in their
offices specifically. They were each then asked whether they would invite
speakers ascribing to particular religions or types of religions to give invocations.
The Commissioners’ testimony concerning the purpose of holding
invocations reflected the same preference for monotheism that we found in the text
of Resolution 2015-101 and a preference for Christianity specifically at the
expense and to the exclusion of other religions. One former Commissioner, who
had been on the Board when the plaintiffs first requested the opportunity to deliver
an invocation, said the opening invocation was “a long-standing tradition of
honoring the Christian community in Brevard County,” and that allowing atheists
or humanists to deliver invocations “would be a dishonor to the Christian
community.” A Commissioner who voted on Resolution 2015-101 confirmed that
he had been quoted in the press as saying that “[t]he invocation is for worshipping
the God that created us,” and clarified that he was referring to “The one and only
true God. The God of the Bible.” Another agreed that “allowing Christian
invocations show[s] the board’s support for Christianity.”
All the Commissioners confirmed that speakers were selected on a rotating
basis, and none of the Commissioners described any sort of formalized policy for
how their office went about choosing who they would invite when it was their turn.
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Several suggested that they focused on congregations in their districts, one said he
“assum[ed]” that his staff would “Google or look in the Yellow pages,” another
said he had “a list of local ministers” that he inherited from a previous
Commissioner and that clerics were added to the list based on “[j]ust [the] personal
relationship [he] might have with that person.” Still another said he focused on
inviting speakers who “are really part of the community.” A former Commissioner
who had not voted on Resolution 2015-101 said that her office had “a list of those
[speakers] who had done it before and [her office] added to it different churches
that [she] was aware of.” She noted that in her district she had “a lot of new
churches being established” and that, in adding churches to the list, she would
consider “[t]heir availability and their community activity.” None of this general
testimony about the selection process amounts to a violation of the Establishment
Clause; it does, however, reflect the lack of consistent standards and the plenary
authority granted to each Commissioner.
The way this plenary authority was exercised is at the core of the
Establishment Clause problem in Brevard County. Only one Commissioner
testified consistently that he would invite anyone who had a “recognized church”
in his district, regardless of the specifics of their belief system. Every other
Commissioner or former Commissioner indicated that the specific religious beliefs
of a prospective invocation-giver would have a real impact on whether they would
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be invited or permitted to give an invocation or excluded from consideration. The
Commissioners took religious beliefs into account in three ways: framing the
purpose of the invocation, scrutinizing belief systems, and categorically excluding
certain religions. These are not firm categories -- these practices flowed from one
another and overlapped. Not every Commissioner considered religious beliefs in
each of these ways, but six out of the seven considered prospective invocation-
givers’ beliefs in some way when deciding who could deliver an invocation and
who could not.
Some described the invocation as being meant for only certain types of
religions. One said that invocations could only come from religions that “look to a
higher authority for spiritual guidance.” Another said that the invocation was
“more for a faith-based monotheological [sic] type of situation” and that a speaker
who was not “a monotheistic type of person” could not give an invocation, even if
he was “[a]ctive in the community” and “[h]elping in the community” because this
speaker would not “represent the faith-based community or faith of people within
the community.” A former Commissioner said she would allow any religion, so
long as it was “a God-fearing religion.”
In other instances, Commissioners indicated that speakers from certain
religions would be subjected to some sort of closer scrutiny, even if they might
ultimately be allowed to offer invocations. One Commissioner said that, if
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approached by a Sikh or a practitioner of a Native American religion, he’d have to
“see what they had to say.” Another would “ask more questions” of a Hindu, and
wasn’t sure about a polytheist generally. Still another would “have to see what
was presented” by a practitioner of a polytheistic religion before allowing them to
offer a prayer, and would “have to think on” religions he wasn’t familiar with. Of
only slightly less concern were those responses from Commissioners that appear to
suggest reluctance or lack of certainty about certain religions, like “I guess I would
[invite a Wiccan]” from one Commissioner or “I guess I would have [been willing
to invite a Muslim]” from another.
Most troubling and plainly unconstitutional were the statements by
numerous Commissioners that certain religions or types of religions would be
flatly banned from giving an invocation. Four of the seven Commissioners,
including three of the five who voted on the Resolution, stated affirmatively that
they would not allow representatives of certain religions to give an invocation.
One said he would not allow a Wiccan, and two more said they probably would
not. A Rastafarian would have received the same set of responses. Rastafarianism
is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion that evolved in Jamaica in the 1930s and
focused on belief in the divinity of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. See
Monique Bedasse, Rasta Evolution: The Theology of the Twelve Tribes of Israel,
40 J. Black Studies 960, 960 (2010). Two Commissioners said they would not
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allow a polytheist to deliver an invocation, even though they had each said they
would allow a Hindu. Hinduism, of course, is a polytheistic religion. See Klaus
K. Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism 15–16 (3d ed. 2007) (“The long history,
the vastness, and the heterogeneity of Hinduism offer enormous challenges to each
and every description of the tradition.” At the same time, though, “[a]ll
observers—including Hindus themselves—would describe Hinduism as
polytheistic.”).
Finally, these same four Commissioners would bar a deist from delivering
an invocation. “Deism” refers to “a rationalistic movement of the 17th and 18th
century whose adherents generally subscribed to a natural religion based on human
reason and morality, on the belief in one God who after creating the world and the
laws governing it refrained from interfering with the operation of those laws, and
on the rejection of every kind of supernatural intervention in human affairs.”
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2370 (2002) (emphasis added). A
bar on deism would exclude Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
and many others among our Nation’s Founders from the opportunity to deliver an
invocation before the Brevard County Board of Commissioners.
These depositions confirm that the selection process entails a grant of
plenary authority to each Commissioner on a rotating basis, and that nearly all of
the Commissioners exercised that authority in a way that categorically excludes
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some religions and places additional burdens on others based on the content of
their religious beliefs. They favor familiar monotheistic religions over other
monotheistic religions that seem unfamiliar. (Thus, by example, one
Commissioner’s response when asked whether he would invite a Rastafarian was:
“Don’t have any idea what that is. But I would say no.”) The preferences evinced
by their answers confirm what the Resolution’s text suggests: that many members
of the Board view the prayer opportunity in Brevard County as an opportunity
reserved only for adherents of monotheistic religions, and only for some of them.
Resolution at 2. In fact, the opportunity in practice is even narrower than the text
suggests, since some monotheistic, and even Abrahamic religions, like
Rastafarianism, are subject to more scrutiny than Christianity or Judaism, if not
outright blackballing.
The Commission’s procedures for selecting speakers are thus in sharp
conflict with the Establishment Clause. To be clear, the constitutional problem is
not that the Commission lacked a formal, written policy or that the selection of
speakers was left to the discretion of individual Commissioners. The issue lies in
how the Commissioners exercised their discretion in practice. Brevard County’s
haphazard selection process categorically excludes certain faiths -- some
monotheistic and apparently all polytheistic ones -- based on their belief systems.
Most Commissioners do not appear to have employed belief-neutral criteria in
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selecting which invocation-givers to invite. Their comments “reflect an aversion
or bias on the part of [county] leaders against minority faiths.” Id. at 1824. In
Galloway, the Court said that a predominantly Christian set of prayer-givers could
be constitutional, “[s]o long as the town maintains a policy of nondiscrimination.”
Id. On any fair examination of the lengthy summary judgment record, we cannot
say the Board has done that here. Commissioners consciously held and acted upon
views about which religions and types of religious beliefs were the right kind for
invocations and which were not. This means that “the prayer opportunity has been
exploited to proselytize or advance” not one religion as Marsh anticipated, but a
class of religions to the exclusion of many others. Marsh, 463 U.S at 794–95.
The fact that there is little to no evidence of discriminatory content in the
invocations actually given in Brevard County cannot save the speaker selection
procedure as it stands today. We rejected just this argument in Pelphrey,
explaining that Marsh had considered selection procedures before approving of
legislative prayer. See Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1281–82 (citing Marsh, 463 U.S. at
793–95). The Establishment Clause provides no safe harbor based on end results
because an impermissible motive in the selection process may taint the whole
scheme. In Marsh, the Court said that, while “[t]he Court of Appeals was
concerned that [the chaplain’s] long tenure ha[d] the effect of giving preference to
his religious views,” the Supreme Court was not concerned because “the evidence
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indicate[d] that he was reappointed because his performance and personal qualities
were acceptable.” Marsh, 463 U.S. at 793. “Absent proof that the chaplain’s
reappointment stemmed from an impermissible motive,” the Court concluded “that
his long tenure [did] not in itself conflict with the Establishment Clause.” Id. at
793–94. The bottom line is that the selection process mattered.
The cases following Marsh have treated selection procedures as highly
probative of whether the prayer opportunity has been exploited. Here and in
Pelphrey, instead of a hiring process, we have a process of inviting and bringing in
volunteers that change week-to-week. In Pelphrey, it was unconstitutional to
“categorically exclude[] certain faiths” by working from a list of volunteers that
excluded whole classes of congregations. Pelphrey, 547 F.3d at 1282. In
Galloway, the plaintiffs did not criticize the selection procedure, which was
decidedly ecumenical. See Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1816. Justice Alito’s
concurrence, though, underscored the relevance of motive and selection
procedures. See id. at 1830–31 (Alito. J., concurring). He observed that, in
Galloway, the town leaders had made an honest mistake in failing to realize that
many residents attended synagogues just outside the city limits and that the leaders
of those congregations ought to have been on their list. Id. This did not require
invalidation of the prayer regime, but the case would have been viewed “very
differently if the omission of these synagogues were intentional.” Id. at 1831.
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As in Pelphrey, we have far more than enough evidence about the selection
procedures in Brevard County to reach a conclusion about whether the “prayer
opportunity has been exploited.” Marsh, 463 U.S. at 794. It has been, both
through the written policies described and outlined in Resolution 2015-101 and
even more clearly through the Board’s practices of picking and choosing which
religions to invite and which to reject. The Resolution facially draws distinctions
between preferred monotheistic religions and disfavored others. The selection
procedures as practiced take religious beliefs into account, again favoring some
creeds over others. By discriminating on the basis of religion in these two ways,
the County has violated the Establishment Clause. The practice of legislative
prayer “begun by the First Congress stands out as an example of respect and
tolerance for differing views [and] an honest endeavor to achieve inclusivity and
nondiscrimination, and a recognition of the important role that religion plays in the
lives of many Americans.” Am. Legion, 2019 WL 2527471, at *18 (plurality
opinion). The County has failed to follow this model and it has run afoul of the
First Amendment. We, therefore, affirm in part the district court’s decision,
although not all of its reasoning, nor the sweep of its holdings or the breadth of its
injunction.
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IV.
We need not and do not reach any further questions presented in this case,
including whether the County is obliged to allow the individual or organizational
plaintiffs -- atheists and Secular Humanists -- the opportunity to deliver an
invocation at the start of one of its board meetings. 5 We vacate the district court’s
injunction, except insofar as it prohibits the County from continuing the present
speaker-selection practices and procedures as explained by the Commissioners and
as embodied in Resolution 2015-101. The trial court’s injunction goes too far and
says too much. Again, all that we hold today is that the Board’s current invocation
speaker selection procedures are unlawful. The Commissioners have favored some
religions over others, and barred those they did not approve of from being
5
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently ruled that the Chaplain of the U.S. House of
Representatives was not obligated to provide a self-professed atheist the opportunity to deliver a
“nonreligious prayer” because, regardless of whether he was denied the opportunity on account
of being an atheist or because he was going to deliver a nonreligious prayer, “the House
permissibly limits the opening prayer to religious prayer” and the atheist’s prayer would not have
qualified by these terms. See Barker v. Conroy, 921 F.3d 1118, 1132 (D.C. Cir. 2019). The
Court of Appeals explained that limiting the opening invocation to religious prayer “fit ‘within
the tradition long followed in Congress and the state legislatures.’” Id. at 1130 (quoting
Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1846). Legislative prayer -- a “sui generis context,” for Establishment
Clause purposes -- “can be both religious and consistent with the Establishment Clause,” given
the long historical practice. Id. at 1131. The court therefore rejected the atheist’s demand that he
be allowed to give a nonreligious opening prayer.
But we need not reach the analogous question here. Even while accepting that invocations can
permissibly be limited to religious prayers, the D.C. Circuit noted that “the Court has warned
against discriminating among religions or tolerating a pattern of prayers that proselytize or
disparage certain faiths or beliefs.” Id. That discrimination among religions and religious beliefs
is plainly present in the record before us in this case.
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considered. This plainly violates the principle of denominational neutrality found
at the heart of the Establishment Clause. On remand, the district court may recraft
its injunctive relief in a manner consistent with this opinion.
Since the County may return to the drawing board and formulate new
policies about how to begin the meetings of the Board of Commissioners, we have
no reason to interrogate any further claims raised by the plaintiffs. “A fundamental
and longstanding principle of judicial restraint requires that courts avoid reaching
constitutional questions in advance of the necessity of deciding them.” Lyng v.
Nw. Indian Cemetery Protective Ass’n, 485 U.S. 439, 445 (1988); see also
Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692, 705 (2011); Ashwander v. Tenn. Valley Auth.,
297 U.S. 288, 346–47 (1935) (Brandeis, J., concurring) (laying out “a series of
rules under which [the Supreme Court] has avoided passing upon a large part of all
the constitutional questions pressed upon it for decision”).
The law is abundantly clear that the County may allow sectarian prayer at
the start of its legislative sessions, just as the Supreme Court approved prayer in
Marsh and again in Galloway, and as we have in Pelphrey and in Atheists of
Florida. But the County may not employ a discriminatory selection process in
doing so. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district court in part, vacate
in part, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
AFFIRMED in part, VACATED in part, and REMANDED.
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