County board denies opening prayer requests from followers of “pre-Christian deities”

Regardless of the limits on what can consitutionally be said during prayers before government meetings, it's pretty well settled that the government cannot discriminate against followers of a specific religions. Such discrimination often happens subtly—invocations are frequently led by Christian ministers, and unless a rabbi or imam asks, they are not included. But that is not, the Supreme Court has said, necessarily a problem. Motive matters. Thus, unconstitutional discrimination in legislative prayer cases may be difficult to prove.

However, it can be less challenging when a government institution flat out proscribes members of of non-monotheistic religions. And that is what the ACLU accuses a Virginia county Board of Supervisors of doing.

Raw Story “>outlined in Town of Greece v. Galloway a few weeks ago, in which he Supreme Court said that it would not analyze the content of pre-meeting prayers except to see if they were coercive, this policy might not fly because it both gives the appearance of favoring Abrahamic religions and because it seems to discriminate against polytheism.

That might seem in some tension with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals