Wednesday, October 31, 2007
-------------------------------------------------------------------

INDIANAPOLIS — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit Tuesday reversed a ruling prohibiting invocations in the name of Jesus during the opening of Indiana legislative sessions.  The Alliance Defense Fund and the Family Research Council filed a friend-of-the-court brief to the 7th Circuit.

“The custom of our Founding Fathers to open meetings with prayer continues to this day.  Those who oppose Christian invocations are essentially saying that the Founders were violating the Constitution as they were writing it,” said ADF Senior Counsel Glen Lavy. “People of all religions have always had an equal opportunity to offer prayer before Indiana legislative sessions.”

A federal judge ruled in favor of four Indiana citizens who brought a suit against Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma in 2005.  The four objected to the Christian prayers.  In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge David F. Hamilton stated that future invocations in the Indiana legislature must be “non-sectarian.”

Backing an appeal filed by the Indiana speaker of the house, ADF and FRC filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Hinrichs v. Bosma in 2006 in defense of the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayers offered according to the dictates of the giver’s conscience (www.telladf.org/UserDocs/BosmaAmicus.pdf).

The ruling issued by the 7th Circuit in the case can be read at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/BosmaDecision.pdf.

“The Indiana House has opened each meeting day with an invocation for the last 189 years,” noted Lavy.  “The ICLU’s arguments about the impermissibility of Christian prayers at legislative sessions did not square with history and certainly not with the beliefs of the very people who wrote the Constitution itself