Loading ...The Stay Stays…
The Indiana House of Representative has suffered a setback in its quest to reinstate sectarian prayers. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the chamber’s request to lift a federal court’s ruling barring prayers that invoke the names of specific religious deities. House Speaker Brian Bosma says he’s not surprised at the ruling. In its opinion, the 7th Circuit ruled the issues were so important in the House prayer case that it wanted to hear oral arguments. Those arguments will likely take place this summer.
March 1st, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Your reading of the case is not correct. The court made clear that it wanted to make it “plain to all” by writing such a detailed opinion on a preliminary matter which is typically afforded a very brief order. Make no mistake, the Court rebuked Bosma with this opinion. It wrote:
“Because this matter involves the internal proceedings of a state legislative body and therefore raises important federalism concerns, we have departed from our usual practice of deciding preliminary matters such as this one by a short order and have elected to set forth our views in more plenary fashion. We hope that, by proceeding in this manner, the tentative nature of our analysis at this very early point in the litigation will be plain to all.”