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Religious-rights claims by Wiccans yield mixed results.

Article Excerpt
Believers in the Wicca religion may be in the minority, but recently they have played major roles in a pair of cases involving the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Wynne v. Town of Great Falls, a case that pitted a Wiccan against a South Carolina town council, ending a four-year legal battle. The Fourth Circuit had found that the town violated the Establishment Clause by including overtly Christian references in its opening prayers. (376 F.3d 292 (4th Cir. 2004).)

And in April, the Fourth Circuit ruled in Simpson v. Chesterfield County that the board of supervisors of a Virginia town can exclude Wiccans from its official list of clerics who are allowed to offer invocations or prayers at town meetings. The plaintiff is appealing to the Supreme Court. (404 F.3d 276 (4th Cir. 2005).)

The two opinions rely on interpretations of the High Court's decision in Marsh v. Chambers, which found that deliberative government bodies could include prayers as part of their meetings as long...

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