June 16, 2023

SENT VIA EMAIL AND U.S. MAIL:

council3@cityofmobile.org

C.J. Small
President
Mobile City Council
P.O. Box 1827
Mobile, AL 36633

Re: Anti-LGBTQIA+ Preaching at City Council Meeting

Dear President Small:

I am writing on behalf of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) regarding a constitutional
violation that occurred at a city council meeting. FFRF is a national nonprofit organization with more than
40,000 members across the country, including members in Alabama. Our purposes are to protect the
constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters
relating to nontheism.

A concerned Mobile resident and taxpayer contacted us to report that at the June 6 meeting, Pathway
Church Pastor Travis Johnson was invited to give the opening invocation after the meeting was called to
order. It is our understanding that as part of the meeting’s agenda, several citizens were scheduled to voice
their opinions regarding drag performers at city events, as well as a Pride Parade occurring in Mobile.1
Likely because of this, Pastor Johnson included in his six minute long prayer, several references opposing
LGBTQIA+ inclusion, utilizing common dog whistles to thinly veil his true meaning:

So Lord, on this point I pause and especially pray for the protection of the children of
Mobile who are inundated and targeted by harmful agendas and social media from peers
at times in our schools, at times in our public libraries, and at times in our city parks. I
pray that you’ll put a hedge of protection around them and guard them from ideologies
that have zeroed in on them at their most youngest and most innocent ages with
sexualized merchandising, conversation, and interactions. Lord give us wisdom as we
consider how to best govern all of our citizens while protecting the most innocent among
us. Lord bless our leaders in this respect. I ask that you bless all the people of Mobile that
we will walk under the blessing Jeremiah pronounced. (emphasis added)2

1
See attached.
2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAYPGmkNGKU&t=300s
It is also our understanding based on review of previous meeting minutes that the overwhelming majority
of the invocations are given by Christian pastors.

We write to request that the city council refrain from opening meetings with prayer and instead solemnize
meetings with the more inclusive practice of observing a moment of silence. If you must open with an
invocation we ask that you ensure that there is a diversity of views represented, and that at minimum the
person giving the invocation does not use the endorsement given to them by the city council to attack
minority members of the community.

Prayer at government meetings is unnecessary, inappropriate, and divisive. The best solution is to
discontinue invocations altogether. All city council members and Mobile citizens are of course free to
pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way. However, they do not need to worship on
taxpayers’ time. The city council ought not to lend its power and prestige to religion by scheduling,
hosting or conducting governmental prayers.

Citizens, including Mobile’s nonreligious citizens, are compelled to come before the council and its
committees on important civic matters, to seek licenses and permits and to participate in important
decisions affecting their livelihoods, property, children, and quality of life. The opening prayer excludes
those community members who belong to the thirty-seven percent of Americans who are non-Christians,
including the nearly one in three Americans who now identify as religiously unaffiliated.3 The rhetoric in
Pastor Johnson’s prayer was particularly exclusive to the seven percent of Americans who identify as a
part of the LGBTQIA+ community.4 It is coercive, embarrassing and intimidating for nonreligious
citizens to be required to make a public showing of their nonbelief (by not rising or praying) or else to
display deference or obeisance toward a religious sentiment in which they do not believe, but which their
city council members clearly do. Government-sponsored prayer “has the improper effect of coercing
those present to participate in an act of religious worship.” Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S.
290, 312 (2000).

As you may be aware, the Supreme Court addressed government prayer in Town of Greece, N.Y. v.
Galloway. 134 S. Ct. 1811 (2014). The Court in Galloway only approved opening a neutral forum for
others, including non-Christians and atheists, to give invocations. “Our Government is prohibited
from prescribing prayers to be recited in our public institutions.” Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1822 (citing
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 430 (1962)). It is inappropriate and coercive for council members to direct
meeting attendees to rise, participate in, or otherwise show deference to the invocations. The Supreme
Court specified in Galloway that its “analysis would be different if town board members directed the
public to participate in the prayers . . . Although board members themselves stood, bowed their heads, or
made the sign of the cross during the prayer, they at no point solicited similar gestures by the public.”
Galloway, 134 S. Ct. at 1826.

FFRF recently won a suit in the Fourth Circuit against the City of Parkersburg over the city council’s
practice of opening each meeting with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Cobranchi v. City of Parkersburg,
Civil Action 2:18-cv-01198 (S.D.W. Va. May. 17, 2022). The Court permanently enjoined the city council
from opening its meetings with the Lord’s Prayer, declaring the practice unconstitutional. Id. The Court

3
Gregory A. Smith, About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated, Pew Research Center (Dec. 14, 2021),
www.pewforum.org/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/.
4
Jeffery M. Jones, U.S. LGBT Identification Steady at 7.2%, Gallup (Feb. 22, 2023)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/470708/lgbt-identification-steady.aspx
found that the city council ran afoul of the Establishment Clause when it “wrapped itself in a single faith.”
Id. at ¶ 28. The Court noted several key factors that led to its conclusion that the prayer practice was
unconstitutional, including “unduly heightened risk of coercion by the state by virtue of the government
identity of the prayer-givers acting in unison, the invariable nature of the sectarian prayer” and “the
implicit and sometimes express invitation to the public in attendance to join in, all in the relative intimacy
of a local government setting.” Id.

Here, it appears that while city council members are not giving the invocations, they are still exclusively
religious in nature. The Supreme Court in Galloway clearly stated that the purpose of these invocations
must be inclusive: “These ceremonial prayers strive for the idea that people of many faiths may be united
in a community of tolerance and devotion.” Galloway, at 1823. The Supreme Court’s decision would have
been different had the town used the prayer as an opportunity to inculcate one religious view and exclude
minority religions like the city council appears to be doing. Allowing an invocation giver to target a
minority group through their prayer is also contrary to the inclusivity required under Galloway,
particularly in a time when LGBTQIA+ Americans are experiencing significant rates of violence.
According to the Williams Institute, LGBTQIA+ people are nine times more likely to be victims of a
violent hate crime.5

In order to demonstrate the city council’s respect for the diverse range of religious and nonreligious
citizens living in the Mobile community, we urge you to concentrate on civil matters and leave religion to
the private conscience of each individual by ending the practice of hosting prayers at your meetings.
Should the practice continue, we ask the city council to establish guidelines for invocations that ensure the
city is not unintentionally endorsing bigotry against minority groups. Please inform us in writing of the
steps you are taking to resolve this matter.

Sincerely,

Kat D. Grant
Equal Justice Works Fellow (sponsored by Wm. Collins Kohler Foundation)
Freedom From Religion Foundation

Enclosure

5
The Williams Institute, LGBT people nine times more likely than non-LGBT people to be victims of violent hate crimes (Dec. 21,
2022) https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/lgbt-hate-crimes-press-release/