Counterpoint: Recent religion rulings clear legal path for call to prayer

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Is the new Minneapolis ordinance expanding the right of Muslims to broadcast the call to prayer (adhan) constitutional? We think the answer is yes. A misguided commentary ("Call to prayer decision may be inclusive, but is it legal?" May 8) reached a different result only by applying a constitutional test the Supreme Court has emphatically buried.

The ordinance is on much stronger ground when examined under the correct constitutional standard.

It's helpful to start with this context: This ordinance is about sound control levels. City Council members weren't creating new policy only for Islamic places of worship. They were amending existing law that allows all places of worship to emit sounds, like church bells, related to worship.

Before the amendment to accommodate adhan, the ordinance already contained an exemption from sound control levels for "Sounds created by bells, chimes, carillons, or sounds associated with religious worship no more than 10 minutes in any one hour and no more than 60 minutes in a 24-hour period, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m."

As amended, the ordinance exempts "Sounds created by bells, chimes, carillons, amplifying equipment, or sounds associated with religious worship no more than six minutes in any one hour and no more than 60 minutes in a 24-hour period."

The suggestion that this is a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment is at odds with current Supreme Court case law. In particular, reliance in the previous commentary on the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lemon v. Kurtzman is misplaced.

That heavily criticized decision has been substantially limited and now effectively overruled by the Supreme Court in a decision from last term, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. That case rejected Lemon's emphasis on the purpose and effect of legislation and adopted instead a focus on history and traditional practices.

Cases like Kennedy v. Bremerton make it clear that, in the eyes of the current Supreme Court, not all accommodations of religion are unconstitutional. For better or worse, the effect of recent decisions construing the religion clauses is that the right to free exercise of religion has been expanded and government given greater latitude to enact legislation that benefits religion.

It seems likely that a court applying current precedent would recognize that calls to worship are part of our history and traditional practices. The new ordinance, which is really an adjustment of a previously existing ordinance, now simply makes the previously protected traditional practice more inclusive. Creating equality in those practices does not constitute a violation of the establishment clause.