Broom Rider Swept Out of Supreme Court

Don't you just hate it when even your best spells and incantations don't work:

A practicing witch who sought to have her prayers heard at government meetings in a Richmond, Va., suburb had no magic before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justices rejected an appeal by Cyndi Simpson, a Wiccan priestess and member of the Broom Riders Association, who wanted to offer a generalized prayer to the "creator of the universe" in Chesterfield County, Va.

"I wasn't going to talk about the goddess," Simpson said previous to today's decision. "I was going to call the elements, maybe offer up an invocation to the highest being."

[...]

With help from the ACLU (imagine that - HC) , which ironically often opposes most expressions of prayer at government events, Simpson sued and initially won before a federal court judge who ruled the county board violated Simpson's constitutional right of equal and free expression of her religious beliefs.

But at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, she lost when jurists found Chesterfield County had amended its policy and directed clerics to avoid any mention of Jesus Christ.

It was probably the eye of newt and tongue of frog thing that turned them off.