Dustin Gardiner

The Republic | azcentral.com

Phoenix City Council members voted 7-2 Wednesday night to restore a spoken prayer at council meetings, but the invocation would have to be given exclusively by chaplains for the police and fire departments.

That vote is the latest twist in a fiery debate that began after a group of Satanists were scheduled to give the opening prayer at a council meeting in February.

Rather than let followers of the Satanic Temple pray, the council voted last month to replace the invocation with a "moment of silent prayer and reflection." City leaders said Phoenix would have faced a costly lawsuit if it kept holding a prayer and rejected the Satanist's request to pray, as some council members advocated.

But the decision to replace the spoken prayer with a moment of silence has since drawn protests from some council members, residents and religious leaders. They said the city's move was akin to banning prayer and gave the Satanists a victory.

Council reconsidered after petition

On Wednesday, the council had to reconsider that decision after two residents submitted a petition calling for the council to reinstate the invocation. Councilman Jim Waring motioned that the council approve the petition with an amendment requiring that the city's police or fire chaplains only give the prayer.

But the vote was not the final decision. Council members must now vote on a specific ordinance to make the rule change. City staff still needs to draft that ordinance, and a final vote is expected in a few weeks.

"I think we’re in a good place, but the fight is not done yet," Waring said after the vote. "I feel like the last vote was hasty ... we should work harder to try and preserve something that was important to a lot of people."

Waring and council members Sal DiCiccio, Bill Gates, Daniel Valenzuela, Michael Nowakowski, Laura Pastor and Thelda Williams voted to restore the prayer. Pastor, Valenzuela and Williams had previously supported the move to a moment of silence.

Mayor Greg Stanton and Councilwoman Kate Gallego cast the votes in opposition. Stanton suggested the move could land the city in legal trouble, saying, the U.S. Constitution requires all faith traditions to be invited to the table if the city holds public prayer.

“I thought that the policy we passed a few weeks ago struck the right balance," Stanton said.

Legal implications

Legal arguments also proliferated before the council's February vote to replace the spoken prayer with a moment of silence. At the time, a group of four councilmen had proposed a plan to allow council members to take turns inviting different religious groups to give the prayer, effectively uninviting the Satanists.

City Attorney Brad Holm said that would be a violation of the First Amendment, if applied retroactively. He said the city could not change its invocation practice to specifically block a member of the Satanic Temple from speaking. Members of the Satanic Temple had vowed to sue if the council adopted the earlier proposal of the four councilmen.

However, Holm suggested the proposal council members approved Wednesday, allowing only city chaplains to give the prayer, would likely prevail if the city gets sued.

"The answer is it’s constitutional in accordance with a long line of cases, so the probabilities are that it would be upheld by a court," Holm said of Wednesday's council decision. "But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be challenged in this particular case, and I’d rather not say in open session what I suspect the outcome of a challenge (would be)."

The prayer issue has been sharply divisive at Phoenix City Hall, and thousands of people have taken to social media to express their frustrations over the debate. Councilwoman Williams, a decisive swing vote in Wednesday's decision, said she voted in favor of the change knowing more questions will be answered before a final council vote.

“I believe this has been turned into a political football," Williams said. “I just want it to end. Phoenix is better than that. This council is above this crap, quite frankly."

He gave the final prayer at a Phoenix council meeting, but is not silent for a moment