A court has rejected a threat to ban prayer requests from church bulletins.
An invasion of privacy lawsuit was filed by a Jewish woman after her stepson printed a prayer request about her in a Christian newsletter. Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel has details. "This is a case where a prayer request was put in a newsletter, a prayer request by a stepson for his stepmother with regards to her relationship to Jesus Christ or her actual journey of faith --, and as a result of that, there was a subsequent lawsuit over a year later," he explains. The stepmother, Staver notes, was apparently embarrassed and offended over it; however, the Florida Supreme Court rejected her complaint. Staver was asked about the results if the court had ruled otherwise. "There's no question that if 'false light invasion of privacy' was accepted by the Florida Supreme Court, then churches that publish prayer requests could have been liable for someone who says that 'I am highly offended at this,'" he adds. According to Staver, even church newsletters, websites, or e-mails could have been subjected to lawsuits had the court ruled differently. He believes false light invasion of privacy claims "choke" free-speech rights. "To remain alive and well, speech needs to be free and robust," he tells WorldNetDaily. "To allow one person to silence another, merely because truthful words offend, would result in no freedom at all."
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