Legal Experts Blast Judge’s Decision: ‘If National Day of Prayer is Unconstitutional, the Constitution is Unconstitutional’
Conservative legal experts say a federal district judge in Wisconsin had no legal basis for declaring the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional – and predict the decision cannot stand.
(CNSNews.com) – Conservative legal experts say a federal district judge in Wisconsin had no legal basis for declaring the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional – and predict the decision cannot stand.
“If the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, then the Constitution itself if unconstitutional,” Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va., told CNSNews.com.
“The National Day of Prayer – or prayer itself – is older than the Constitution,” Staver said. “There is no question it will be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
In a decision released Thursday, U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb in Madison,Wis., declared unconstitutional a 1988 federal law giving the president the authority to designate the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer.
The decision came in a case filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison, Wis.-based atheist group, which had argued that the statute was unconstitutional because it endorses prayer.
The judge agreed with the atheist group, and based her decision, in part, on the fact that atheists “feel” marginalized by the law directing the president to declare a National Day of Prayer.
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