(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Monday declared a Florida county’s ban on atheists and other non-religious groups from giving invocations before public meetings unconstitutional, even as it ordered the narrowing of an injunction against the practice.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Brevard County violated the First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause” by allowing clerics from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other monotheistic religions and denominations deliver invocations at county commissioner meetings, while excluding atheists, secular humanists and others deemed outside the “mainstream.”

“Brevard County’s haphazard selection process categorically excludes certain faiths – some monotheistic and apparently all polytheistic ones – based on their belief systems,” Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus wrote for a three-judge panel.

Read more