At the request of the national American Civil Liberties Union, the Utah chapter of that organization has withdrawn a friend-of-the-court brief filed in a Rhode Island graduation prayer case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We wanted to play," said Michele Parish, executive director of the Utah Chapter of the ACLU. "But they (the national office) assured us they would represent our interests."The Utah chapter is challenging the practice of prayer at graduation exercises in two Utah school districts. That case has been put on hold until the Rhode Island dispute is resolved.
A similar case in Rhode Island is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Utah chapter had filed a brief support of that challenge. Parish said she did not know that local affiliates were not supposed to file briefs in those cases where the national ACLU office was the lead counsel.