City Council can't begin meetings with sectarian prayer

By The Associated Press

09.10.02

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LOS ANGELES — A state appeals court yesterday upheld a lower court ruling that the suburban Burbank City Council may not begin meetings with sectarian prayers such as one that invoked the name Jesus Christ and triggered a lawsuit.

A three-judge panel of the state's 2nd District Court of Appeal agreed with the ruling by Superior Court Judge Alexander H. Williams III, who ordered Burbank to advise anyone conducting a prayer as part of a council meeting that it may not be sectarian.

The City Council in Burbank, a suburb of about 200,000 people in the San Fernando Valley, has begun its meetings with an invocation by a member of a nondenominational ministerial association since 1953.

The court sided with jailed Jewish Defense League chairman Irv Rubin, who protested more than two years ago against prayers at council meetings.

Rubin and Roberto Alejandro Gandara, a supporter of strict church-state separation, sued the city of Burbank after a minister delivered a prayer invoking the name of Jesus Christ before a council meeting in November 1999.

Rubin and Gandara won their case at trial, and attorneys for the city appealed. Yesterday the appellate district court upheld that judgment, ruling that mentioning Jesus Christ was a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits any law respecting the establishment of religion.

The court stated that the only restriction being imposed on the prayer is that it "not be used to advance one faith or belief over another."

Since the lower court ruling, the agenda has noted that sectarian prayer has been deemed unconstitutional.

At issue before the court was whether saying Jesus Christ's name in prayer before a council meeting gives preference to one religion over another.

"Any legislative prayer that proselytizes or advances one religious belief or faith, or disparages any other, violates the Establishment Clause ... because it conveyed the message that Christianity was being advanced over other religions," the 2nd District Court of Appeals wrote in its decision.

Rubin, 56, the leader of the militant Jewish Defense League, was arrested in December 2001 along with another JDL member, Earl Krugel, 59, on charges that they conspired to bomb the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City and the offices of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-San Clemente, who is of Lebanese-Christian descent. If convicted, the two face life in prison.

Rubin, who pleaded not guilty, is being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles while he awaits trial.

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