Prayer Cases Turned Away by U.S. Supreme Court Justices

By Greg Stohr - Jan 17, 2012 12:14 PM ET

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to give government bodies more freedom to open sessions with prayers, rejecting a pair of appeals that sought to loosen the restrictions some lower courts have imposed.

The justices today left intact a federal appeals ruling that said a North Carolina county board was violating the constitutional separation of church and state by opening most of its sessions with a Christian prayer. The high court also refused to review a separate decision that barred prayers at meetings of a Delaware school board.

Bloomberg