PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
HASHMEL C. TURNER, JR.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF
FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA; THOMAS
J. TOMZAK, in his official capacity
as Mayor of the City of No. 06-1944
Fredericksburg, Virginia,
Defendants-Appellees.
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF
VIRGINIA FOUNDATION,
Amicus Supporting Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Richmond.
James R. Spencer, Chief District Judge.
(3:06-cv-00023-JRS)
Argued: March 19, 2008
Decided: July 23, 2008
Before Sandra Day O’CONNOR, Associate Justice (Retired),
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation, and
MOTZ and SHEDD, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Associate Justice O’Connor wrote the
opinion, in which Judge Motz and Judge Shedd joined.
2 TURNER v. CITY COUNCIL OF FREDERICKSBURG
COUNSEL
ARGUED: R. Johan Conrod, Jr., KAUFMAN & CANOLES, P.C.,
Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellant. Robert Martin Rolfe, HUNTON &
WILLIAMS, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: J.
Bradley Reaves, KAUFMAN & CANOLES, P.C., Norfolk, Virginia;
James J. Knicely, KNICELY & ASSOCIATES, P.C., Williamsburg,
Virginia, for Appellant. Maya M. Eckstein, Terence J. Rasmussen,
Thomas K. Johnstone, IV, HUNTON & WILLIAMS, Richmond, Vir-
ginia; Elliot M. Mincberg, Judith E. Schaeffer, PEOPLE FOR THE
AMERICAN WAY FOUNDATION, Washington, D.C., for Appel-
lees. Rebecca K. Glenberg, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
OF VIRGINIA FOUNDATION, INC., Richmond, Virginia, for
Amicus Supporting Appellees.
OPINION
O’CONNOR, Associate Justice (Retired):
Appellant Hashmel Turner claims that the Council for the City of
Fredericksburg, Virginia, violated his First Amendment rights when
it implemented a policy beginning in 2005 requiring that legislative
prayers be nondenominational. Because the prayers at issue here are
government speech, we hold that Fredericksburg’s prayer policy does
not violate Turner’s Free Speech and Free Exercise rights. Likewise,
the requirement that the prayers be nondenominational does not vio-
late the Establishment Clause.
I.
The Council of the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia ("the Council")
begins every meeting with a Call to Order, which consists of an open-
ing prayer offered by one of the Council’s elected members followed
by the Pledge of Allegiance. Only Council members are allowed to
offer the opening prayer, and the Council members rotate the Call to
Order duty. Until 2005, members of the Council were allowed to offer
denominational prayers.
TURNER v. CITY COUNCIL OF FREDERICKSBURG 3
Turner was first elected to the Council in 2002. He is an ordained
minister and a part-time pastor of the First Baptist Church of Love.
Turner’s religious beliefs require him to close his prayers in the name
of Jesus Christ. Turner’s prayers on behalf of the Council reflected
this practice.
In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to file a
lawsuit if the Council’s practice of opening with sectarian prayers
continued. The City Attorney examined the relevant case law and
concluded that the safest course of action was to continue offering
prayers, but to offer nondenominational prayers which did not invoke
the name of Jesus Christ. The Council adopted their attorney’s sug-
gestion and promulgated a prayer policy on November 8, 2005. Tur-
ner abstained from voting in that decision.
On November 22, 2005, Turner’s name came to the front of the
prayer rotation. Knowing Turner’s beliefs on the matter, the Mayor
asked Turner if he planned to close his prayer in the name of Jesus
Christ, in violation of the newly adopted policy; Turner said that he
would. The Mayor refused to recognize Turner and called on another
Council member to deliver the opening prayer instead.
Turner filed this suit, claiming that the Council’s prayer policy was
an unconstitutional establishment of religion, and that it violated his
Free Exercise and Free Speech rights. The district court granted sum-
mary judgment to the Council, and this appeal followed.
II.
As a preliminary matter, we must decide whether the legislative
prayer at issue here is speech that must be attributed to the govern-
ment, or whether the Call to Order prayers were given in a personal
capacity.
The Fourth Circuit has adopted a four-factor test for determining
when speech can be attributed to the government. In order to deter-
mine whether the speech in question is government or private speech,
we consider:
4 TURNER v. CITY COUNCIL OF FREDERICKSBURG
(1) the central "purpose" of the program in which the speech
in question occurs; (2) the degree of "editorial control" exer-
cised by the government or private entities over the content
of the speech; (3) the identity of the "literal speaker"; and
(4) whether the government or the private entity bears the
"ultimate responsibility" for the content of the speech.
Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. v. Comm’r of Dep’t of Motor
Vehicles, 288 F.3d 610, 618 (2002), citing Wells v. City & County of
Denver, 257 F.3d 1132, 1141 (10th Cir. 2001). Applying these fac-
tors, we conclude that the legislative prayer at issue here is govern-
mental speech.
First, the purpose of the program suggests that the speech is gov-
ernmental in nature. The prayer is an official part of every Council
meeting. It is listed on the agenda, and is delivered as part of the
opening, along with the Pledge of Allegiance. The person giving the
prayer is called on by the Mayor. The prayers typically ask that Coun-
cil members be granted wisdom and guidance as they deliberate and
decide how best to govern the city. We conclude that the central pur-
pose of the Council meeting is to conduct the business of the govern-
ment, and the opening prayer is clearly serving a government purpose.
As to the second and third factors, the Council itself exercises sub-
stantial editorial control over the speech in question, as it has prohib-
ited the giving of a sectarian prayer. While Turner is the literal
speaker, he is allowed to speak only by virtue of his role as a Council
member. Council members are the only ones allowed to give the Call
to Order.
The only factor about which there is any question is whether the
government or the Council member who delivers the prayer bears the
ultimate responsibility for its content.
In the prayers Turner offered before the current prayer policy was
adopted, he prayed, "As we are about the business of this locality, we
ask Lord God, that you will cleanse our hearts and our minds that we
make the right decisions that’s best suited for this locality." JA 489.
TURNER v. CITY COUNCIL OF FREDERICKSBURG 5
It is true that Turner and the other Council members take some per-
sonal responsibility for their Call to Order prayers. But given the
focus of the prayers on government business at the opening of the
Council’s meetings, we agree with the District Court that the prayers
at issue are government speech.
Turner has not cited a single case in which a legislative prayer was
treated as individual or private speech. Indeed, the Fourth Circuit has
determined that more difficult cases than this one should be classified
as government speech. For instance, in Simpson v. Chesterfield
County Board of Supervisors, 404 F.3d 276 (4th Cir. 2005), the Board
of Supervisors invited religious leaders from congregations through-
out Chesterfield County to give prayers on a rotating basis. Id. at 279.
The identity of the speaker, and the responsibility for the speech, was,
in that case, less clearly attributable to the government than the
speech here, because the speakers there were not government offi-
cials. Simpson nonetheless held that "the speech . . . was government
speech." Id. at 288.
III.
Turner claims that, under the Establishment Clause, the govern-
ment may not dictate the content of official prayers. He points to Lee
v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992), which held that a school principal,
who directed a rabbi to deliver a nonsectarian prayer, violated the
Establishment Clause. The Court explained that "[i]t is a cornerstone
principle of our Establishment Clause jurisprudence that ‘it is no part
of the business of government to compose official prayers for any
group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious pro-
gram carried on by government.’" Id. at 588 (quoting Engel v. Vitale,
370 U.S. 421, 425 (1962)). Thus, Turner says, the government cannot
require that nonsectarian prayers be given.
Turner’s argument misses the mark. As the Lee Court went on to
explain, the school’s direction to deliver a nonsectarian prayer was a
"good-faith attempt to ensure that the sectarianism which is so often
the flashpoint for religious animosity [was] removed from the gradua-
tion ceremony." Id. But the Establishment Clause question that was
raised was not whether the school had made a good-faith attempt to
accommodate other religions; instead, the question was "the legiti-
6 TURNER v. CITY COUNCIL OF FREDERICKSBURG
macy of its undertaking that enterprise at all when the object is to pro-
duce a prayer to be used in a formal religious exercise which students,
for all practical purposes, are obliged to attend." Id. at 589. We do not
read Lee as holding that a government cannot require legislative
prayers to be nonsectarian. Instead, Lee established that government
cannot compel students to participate in a religious exercise as part of
a school program.
The Supreme Court of the United States has treated legislative
prayer differently from prayer at school events: "[T]here can be no
doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has
become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke Divine guidance
on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not, in these cir-
cumstances, an ‘establishment’ of religion or a step toward establish-
ment.’" Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 792 (1983). Opening
prayers need not serve a proselytizing function, and often are an "ac-
knowledgement of beliefs widely held among the people of this coun-
try." Id. So long as the prayer is not used to advance a particular
religion or to disparage another faith or belief, courts ought not to
"parse the content of a particular prayer." Id. at 795; see also Wynne
v. Town of Great Falls, 376 F.3d 292, 298 (4th Cir. 2004).
We need not decide whether the Establishment Clause compelled
the Council to adopt their legislative prayer policy, because the Estab-
lishment Clause does not absolutely dictate the form of legislative
prayer. In Marsh, the legislature employed a single chaplain and
printed the prayers he offered in prayerbooks at public expense. By
contrast, the legislature in Simpson allowed a diverse group of church
leaders from around the community to give prayers at open meetings.
Simpson, 404 F.3d at 279. Both varieties of legislative prayer were
found constitutional. The prayers in both cases shared a common
characteristic: they recognized the rich religious heritage of our coun-
try in a fashion that was designed to include members of the commu-
nity, rather than to proselytize.
The Council’s decision to provide only nonsectarian legislative
prayers places it squarely within the range of conduct permitted by
Marsh and Simpson. The restriction that prayers be nonsectarian in
nature is designed to make the prayers accessible to people who come
from a variety of backgrounds, not to exclude or disparage a particu-
TURNER v. CITY COUNCIL OF FREDERICKSBURG 7
lar faith. The Council’s decision to open its legislative meetings with
nondenominational prayers does not violate the Establishment Clause.
IV.
Appellant also argues that the prayer policy violates his Free Exer-
cise and First Amendment rights. As Simpson explained:
[T]his issue turns on the characterization of the invocation
as government speech. . . . The invocation is not intended
for the exchange of views or other public discourse. Nor is
it intended for the exercise of one’s religion. . . . The con-
text, and to a degree, the content of the invocation segment
is governed by established guidelines by which the [govern-
ment] may regulate the content of what is not expressed.
Simpson, 404 F.3d at 288 (internal citations omitted) (second omis-
sion in original); see also Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of Uni-
versity of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 833 (1995) ("[W]e have permitted
the government to regulate the content of what is or is not expressed
when it is the speaker.").
Turner was not forced to offer a prayer that violated his deep-
ly-held religious beliefs. Instead, he was given the chance to pray on
behalf of the government. Turner was unwilling to do so in the man-
ner that the government had proscribed, but remains free to pray on
his own behalf, in nongovernmental endeavors, in the manner dictated
by his conscience.
His First Amendment and Free Exercise rights have not been vio-
lated.
For these reasons, the decision of the district court is
AFFIRMED.