SCOTUS Certiorari in Offing?

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Turner v. City Council of the City of Fredericksburg this week that in an action alleging violation of plaintiff's First Amendment rights arising from the imposition of a city policy requiring that legislative prayers be nondenominational, summary judgment for defendant-city council is affirmed where: 1) the prayers at issue are government speech, and thus the prayer policy does not violate plaintiff's Free Speech and Free Exercise rights; and 2) the requirement that the prayers be nondenominational does not violate the Establishment Clause.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held this week in Colorado Christian Univ. v. Weaver that in a university's challenge to Colorado's program that provides scholarships to eligible students who attend any accredited college in the state, public or private, secular or religious, other than those the state deems "pervasively sectarian", summary judgment for state defendants is reversed where: 1) the program expressly discriminates among religions without constitutional justification; and 2) its criteria for doing so involve unconstitutionally intrusive scrutiny of religious belief and practice.