AHLC Celebrates PA Court Ruling

Contact:

Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088, shenry@americanhumanist.org

Monica Miller, (202) 238-9088, mmiller@americanhumanist.org

The American Humanist Association commends the recent District Court decision condemning the Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ policy banning nonreligious people from giving the daily invocations on the House floor.

“The Pennsylvania district court properly understood that the Supreme Court’s legislative prayer cases do not give legislatures carte blanche to prefer some religions over others, and religion over non-religion,” said Monica Miller, Senior Counsel for the American Humanist Association and lead counsel on the AHA’s legislative prayer case in Carroll County, Maryland. “Quite the opposite, the Supreme Court in Town of Greece was very clear that in order for legislative prayer to survive the narrow exception to the general rule against government prayers, the practice must be nondiscriminatory and allow secular invocations by atheists,” Miller added.

In addition to leading AHA’s legislative prayer case in Carroll County, MD, which is scheduled for a hearing next week, Miller penned two amicus briefs on behalf of the AHA this year challenging the exclusion of humanist and atheist invocators in cases pending before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. and 11th Circuits.