A federal judge in Wisconsin Thursday ruled that the National Day of Prayer celebration violates the First Amendment. http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/91002169.html
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb of the Western District of Wisconsin made her finding in response to an action brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is based in Madison.
That organization of atheists and agnostics had sued President Bush, and then the Obama administration, to bar those two Commander in Chiefs from making their annual proclamations inviting Americans to set aside a day for prayer or meditation.
In her ruling, Crabb found that the federal statute “ordering the president to make the annual proclamation serves no secular purpose, casts nonbelievers as outsiders and goes beyond the mere acknowledgment of religion to encouraging a practice best left to individual conscience,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote.
The judge stressed that her ruling was part of a effort to ensure religious freedom, not to criticize prayer.
“The same law that prohibits the government from declaring a National Day of Prayer also prohibits it from declaring a National Day of Blasphemy,” she said in the decision.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation lauded Crabb’s ruling, saying that the President shouldn’t be able to tell Americans to pray.
The U.S. Department of Justice said it was studying Crabb’s ruling to decide what to do next, and President Barack Obama would make his 2010 proclamation, on May 6, just as planned, according to the Journal Sentinel.
That’s because Crabb stayed enforcement of her ruling until all appeals are exhausted.
