JDL Sues Lancaster, CA Re: Sectarian Prayer

May 18 2010 - 5:54:00:am by JDL

JDL is taking on the city of Lancaster, California, over the issue of sectarian Christian prayers, and the story is making headlines nationwide. JDL attorney Roger Diamond, who represented JDL and our late chairman Irv Rubin in 2000’s victorious Rubin v. City of Burbank, was on Fox News Channel’s Fox and Friends this morning explaining the case. This time around our chairman Shelley Rubin and another plantiff local to the city of Lancaster are suing because the city of Lancaster has defiantly resumed offering sectarian Christian prayers in violation of the ruling in the previous Burbank case in JDL’s favor. That previous ruling was heard on appellate level in California and became binding on all muniicipalities in the state. It was also appealed to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear the appeal.

Our position is clear. We are pro-religion and pro 1st Amendment at the same time. The ruling in Rubin v. Burbank held that, according to the 1st Amendment and legal precedent, non-sectarian prayers of a general nature were Constitutionally permissible for city councils, while sectarian prayers to specific deities were a violation of the Establishment Clause. JDL believes that sectarian religious expressions belong in homes and houses of worship, not governmental gatherings. Prayers to specific deities are by their very nature exclusionary toward those of other faiths.