OCALA – After nearly a decade of litigation, a Florida federal court has ruled that a prayer vigil which took place during a rash of shootings in the City of Ocala in 2014, violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida Judge Timothy J. Corrigan issued the ruling on June 26, in a suit first filed by Art Rojas, Lucinda Hale, Daniel Hale and Frances Jean Porgal on Nov. 24, 2014, versus the City.
(Plaintiffs Daniel Hale and Porgal passed away during the pendency of the case, leaving as Rojas and Lucinda Hale as the only plaintiffs.)
“When the City of Ocala experienced a violent crime spree in the late summer and early fall of 2014, its police department sought to curtail the violence using all available means. As part of those efforts, Chief of Police Kenneth Gregory ‘Greg’ Graham met with members of Ocala’s faith-based community to seek their assistance. What resulted was an invitation from Chief Graham to the community, promoted on the Ocala Police Department Facebook page and elsewhere, encouraging everyone’s attendance at a ‘Community Prayer Vigil’ on Sept. 24, 2014, in the Downtown Square,” Corrigan said.
“Several atheists, including plaintiff Lucinda Hale, contacted Chief Graham and Ocala’s then-mayor, Reuben ‘Kent’ Guinn, in advance of the Prayer Vigil, advising them of their concern that the City’s promotion and sponsorship of a prayer vigil would violate the First Amendment. They were rebuffed, the prayer vigil took place, and this lawsuit followed.”
Corrigan initially found, in 2018, that the prayer vigil was unconstitutional, but when his ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the federal appellate bench ruled that Corrigan should reconsider the case – in light of a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruling supporting high school football coach Joseph Kennedy from Bremerton, Wash. who prayed on the field after games.
And while the City argued the prayer vigil “fits in with other historical examples dating back to George Washington of government and prayer being intertwined, including legislative prayer and proclamations of National Day of Prayer,” Corrigan disagreed with that stance.
“The underlying dispute in Kennedy arose from an individual act of prayer, occurring without any government assistance, and a government directive to not pray. Because Kennedy’s prayers were private and he did not coerce anyone into praying with him, the school district’s directive for him to not publicly pray violated his rights to free speech and free exercise of religion,” Corrigan said.
Corrigan distinguished the circumstances of that case from the instant one, and provided that the Ocala prayer vigil resulted from a meeting in Graham’s office, the police department promoted the event in a letter posted on Facebook and with a flyer that included an image or praying hands, and that uniformed Ocala Police Department chaplains were among the people on the stage during the vigil.
Corrigan explained that while it was “tempting to simply say this decade-old event was conceived with good intent by persons of good will and that no real harm was done, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment serves as a bulwark against government sponsorship or endorsement of religion” – adding that the Court’s role is to “give effect to its protections.”
“If individuals or religious groups had organized a prayer vigil and gathered in the Downtown Square in the City of Ocala to pray for an end to violent crime (even with law enforcement attending), the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would have protected the ‘Free Exercise’ of their religion. But because the City conceived, organized, promoted and conducted the Prayer Vigil, it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment,” Corrigan said.
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida case 5:14-cv-00651
From the Florida Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com