5th Circuit appeals panel hears Louisiana school board prayer case

5th Circuit appeals panel hears Louisiana school board prayer case

Louisiana's Tangipahoa Parish School District continued its battle against the legal pressure of the American Civil Liberties Union on several fronts this week. One attorney litigating for the district says the ACLU is waging a campaign of "fear and intimidation" against local governmental councils and boards.

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) senior counsel Mike Johnson argued Tuesday before a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on behalf of a clarification that he says was needed for a previous ruling from a three-judge panel on the constitutionality of prayer before school board meetings. The case, he points out, started in 2003 and is one of five that have been filed against the Tangipahoa School District over the last 12 to 13 years by the ACLU.

"I'm very optimistic they're going to set this record straight and they're going to clarify once and for all that a school board is just like every other deliberative public body," Johnson notes. "They should be able to open their meetings with an invocation. It's clearly constitutional," he says.

Despite precedent or repetition of lawsuits in each state, Johnson says he does not expect the ACLU to give up. He asserts that group has been "bullying" the Tangipahoa District for more than a decade, trying to find a chink in its armor with the five different lawsuits.

"You know, this is the ACLU's campaign of fear and intimidation and disinformation," the ADF attorney contends. "They try to pick on certain city council school boards in an effort to really intimidate other surrounding boards to do their bidding," he says.

The ACLU and groups like it "have a radical secular agenda," Johnson adds. "They want to get rid of things like opening invocations before public meetings," he says.

The latest of the lawsuits against Tangipahoa was filed last week, according to Associated Press. The suit alleges that members of the Gideons International improperly handed out Bibles on school grounds.