LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California appeals court ruled on Monday that officials in a Los Angeles suburb could not begin meetings with prayers invoking Jesus Christ, saying that doing so amounted to an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity over other religions.
A three-judge panel of the state's Second District Court of Appeal agreed with a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who ordered the city of Burbank to ban before council meetings prayers that promote any one faith or belief over another.
Both decisions came in a lawsuit over a 1999 meeting of the Burbank council that began with a minister giving thanks to God "in the name of Jesus Christ" and despite a city policy providing for prayers from a different faith each night.
The suit was brought by two men who were in attendance that night -- including Jewish Defense League head Irv Rubin, who has since been jailed on charges of plotting to bomb a mosque and a congressman's office.
The Second District opinion would apply to legislative bodies across California unless overturned on further appeal.
"The expression of gratitude and love 'in the name of Jesus Christ' was an explicit invocation of a particular religious belief," Judge Katherine Doi Todd wrote in the panel's 15-page opinion. "The invocation conveyed the message that the Burbank City Council was a Christian body and from this it could be inferred that the council was advancing a religious belief."
The ruling follows a June decision by a three-member panel of a federal appeals court in California that the Pledge of Allegiance could not be recited by school children because the phrase "under God" rendered it unconstitutional.
That opinion stunned America and drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, including President Bush, before it was stayed by the panel for further review.
Juli Scott, chief assistant city attorney for Burbank, said she and the council members were disappointed by the Second District's decision, disagreed with the court's analysis and conclusions and would likely appeal a second time.
'PRAISE THE LORD!'
Scott said that the opinion would force Burbank to censor what religious leaders were allowed to say or prevent them from naming certain deities, which in some cases would invalidate the prayer entirely. It was also wrong, she said, for the court to base a ruling on one invocation when they varied each night.
"(Under U.S. Supreme Court law) courts are not supposed to be looking at the content of an individual prayer without looking at the entire practice first," she said. "And ... what the trial court did, was look at one individual prayer."
Attorney Roger Diamond, who represented Rubin and Gandara in the lawsuit, was jubilant, shouting "praise the Lord!" when reached by a Reuters reporter. He added that his clients were not "anti-religion" but were convinced that prayer belonged in churches, temples and mosques and not in government.
"This went overboard," he said. "This was a prayer in the name of Jesus. That's what crossed the line."
Diamond, who quoted Jesus' words from the Bible in his court papers, said his jailed client had not yet heard of the court victory but would be happy to have won.
"Jesus complained (in the Bible) about people praying in public when its really meant to be a private activity," he said. "I believe, as Jesus said, that politicians do this because they are hypocrites and they want to create the impression that what they are doing is infallible."
The Supreme Court has ruled that legislative prayer does not violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits any law respecting establishment of religion.
But Rubin and Gandara said that Burbank, and other governmental agencies that allow so-called "sectarian" prayer -- or prayer that evokes one faith over another -- was unconstitutional, and the Second District agreed.
Rubin, leader of the militant JDL, was arrested in December 2001 along with another man on charges that they conspired to bomb a Los Angeles-area mosque and the offices of Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican of Lebanese Christian descent.
He pleaded innocent and is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles while he awaits trial.