The Lorain County Board of Commissioners in Ohio is replacing invocations with secular quotations at its meetings after hearing from FFRF.
Christian prayers and bible readings by the commissioners were prior staples of the meetings. “It is coercive, embarrassing, and intimidating for nonreligious citizens to be required to make a public showing of their nonbelief (by not rising or praying) or else to display deference toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe, but which their Board of Commissioners members clearly do,” FFRF Staff Attorney Rebecca Markert said in a letter to the board.
Markert explained that unlike the prayers by outside religious leaders approved by the Supreme Court in Greece v. Galloway, federal courts have struck down prayers led by commissioners themselves.
A county attorney said the board disagreed with FFRF’s position, but had decided to discontinue the prayers anyway, replacing them with a secular “quote of the day.”
