A Texas Judge Opens Court Each Day With a Christian "Mini-Sermon." No Problem, Says the Fifth Circui

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Imagine: It’s your big day in court. Maybe you’re a brand-new attorney, or new to this courtroom. Maybe you’re representing yourself. You walk in and, before you can be heard, everyone in the room, at the judge’s request, has to stand as a chaplain leads the courtroom in prayer. You can’t sit down during the prayer, and the doors are locked. You can only leave if you ask the bailiff—an officer of the court—for permission, or if you can find a tiny button that opens the doors in order to let yourself out.

To any normal person, this prayer is the dictionary definition of “coercive”—a First Amendment violation so obvious that, if it were to appear on a law school exam, you’d assume it was a trick question of some kind. But to the brain-poisoned judges of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, this is a totally acceptable and extremely constitutional set of circumstances. Thanks to their recent decision in Freedom From Religion v. Mack, judges in Texas are free to establish as much religion they like.

Wayne Mack is a Montgomery County Justice of the Peace, a job that entails presiding over certain lower-level civil and criminal matters. Before he took the bench, Mack was a Pentecostal minister, and ran for office on a platform of opening his courtroom with prayers each day and improving access to chaplains in the judicial system.

He kept his promise. The case, which the Fifth Circuit decided on September 29, was heard by Reagan appointees Jerry Smith and E. Grady Jolly and Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee. (Jolly concurred on a procedural issue, but otherwise dissented.) As the majority explains, the first thing a visitor to Mack’s courtroom sees is a message on the door of the courtroom and a nearby television screen: “It is the tradition of this court to have a brief opening ceremony that includes a brief invocation by one of our volunteer chaplains.” It continues: “You are not required to be present or participate.”

Once inside, the doors magnetically lock and can only be opened by pressing a small green button—which, the opinion notes, “visitors often overlook.” (One would think if Mack can post multiple signs about the fact everyone is going to have to pray, he’d have the power to make the exit signage clearer.) Anyone who wants to leave but can’t find the button must ask the bailiff to let them out. Then, they have to remain outside for the duration of the prayer, and are only allowed back in after Mack has been seated on the bench. Anyone willing to stay must stand for the prayer’s duration.

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