Missouri’s Deceptive Amendment 2 Passes: Will Lawsuits Follow?

Yesterday, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 2, which passed with 82 percent in favor and 17 percent against. The vote margin is not surprising given the misleading language that accompanied the measure on the ballot.

Many who voted for the amendment probably thought they were merely protecting the right of citizens to express their religious beliefs, guarantee the right of school children to pray and require public schools to display the Bill of Rights.

In reality, Amendment 2 is not so benign. It opens the door for coercive prayer and proselytizing in public schools, allows students to skip homework if it offends their religious beliefs and infringes on the religious liberty rights of prisoners.

The biggest problem with Amendment 2, however, is that it’s so open-ended nobody really knows exactly what it will do.

For example, one provision mandates that the state “shall ensure that any person shall have the right to pray individually or corporately in a private or public setting so long as such prayer does not result in disturbance of the peace or disruption of a public meeting or assembly.”

Does it mean that all governmental meetings will feature group invocations or benedictions? What if one person’s “right to pray” intrudes on another person’s right to abstain from praying or to pray according to the tenets of her own faith? And what constitutes a disturbance or disruption?

No one knows the answers to any of those questions. That’s where the lawyers come in.