There have been a series of interesting federal Circuit Court decisions this past week.

The 7th Circuit ruled that a group of taxpayers in Indiana did not have standing to challenge the Indiana state legislature’s Prayer of the Day, in which different clergy members—mostly Christian, but occasionally a Muslim, Jew, or Buddhist— would come and give an invocation. The plaintiffs argued that tax dollars—they quantified them— were being spent on promoting specific religions. The Court disagreed, saying the money wasn’t a specific budget line item, and so the the plaintiffs lacked standing. (There’s an excellent dissent beginning on page 34 that both points out how ridiculous the specific line item argument is and goes on to make a hefty argument about the significance of the establishment clause.)

From the dissent:

In my view, the taxpayer-plaintiffs before us have alleged enough to win the right to present their challenge to the House Prayer before a judicial forum. They are challenging a legislative act, and they have alleged concrete pocket-book injuries. Given both the ruling in Marsh and the qualifications on that ruling, the issue they wish to present is a serious one. They argue, in essence, that preferential access to the Speaker’s stand for adherents to the Christian faith is exactly the kind of problem that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause was supposed to remedy. Were this a simple Establishment Clause case in which they complained about hearing the prayers as they walked past the door of the House Chamber on their usual way to work, they may very well have been entitled to proceed. The majority overextends the command of Freedom From Religion in denying them a day in court.

Meanwhile, in a 4th Amendment case, the 1rst Circuit ruled that the police didn’t have the right to do an anal cavity search of a suspect just because one officer had a tip that the suspect was known to “cheek” drugs. Complication? The suspect, fearing the officers were about to bend him over, did produce a bag of coke from his butt. The Circuit Court sent the case back to the district court to give them another pass at proving the cops had enough evidence to conduct the search.

Finally, the 6th Circuit upheld a Christian student’s complaint against his Kentucky high school’s speech code that prohibited students from insulting gays. Background: The code was enacted after a other students sued the Kentucky school for prohibiting them from forming a Gay Straight Alliance.

Courtesy, as always, Decision of the Day.