Atheists, agnostics and others who don't believe in God can be barred from giving invocations at the Pennsylvania statehouse, federal appeals court rules.
The organization, which helped to represent the plaintiffs in the suit, pointed to Judge L. Felipe Restrepo's dissent to the ruling, which said that,"By mandating that all guest chaplains profess a belief in a ‘higher power’ or God, the Pennsylvania House fails to stay ‘neutral in matters of religious theory.'"
Seven nontheist individuals and four organizations sued in 2016, saying that plaintiffs who sought to deliver the invocation and were rejected because they did not practice a God-believing religion were denied their free speech and equal protection rights. According to a recent survey data from the PEW Research Center, 29 percent of Americans identify as nonreligious. Ten percent do not believe in a higher power, while 9 percent don't believe in God, but believe in some sort of higher power.
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