The Freedom From Religion Foundation lacks standing to challenge the President's proclamation of a "national day of prayer."

And so, probably, does everyone else, says the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (PDF). A "feeling of exclusion" or "alienation" is not the "injury in fact" required by Article III of the Constitution. The panel distinguished cases involving a religious display that induced plaintiffs to What did provide standing, we held, is that the plaintiffs "alter[] their daily commute...incurring costs in both time and money."

We talked about this case a year ago when the district judge, Barbara Crabb (here in Madison) issued an injunction barring the proclamation, saying "the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience." The new decision doesn't reach the merits of the case; standing is a threshold issue. But you can tell what the court thought of the Establishment Clause question:

A President frequently calls on citizens to do things that they prefer not to do—to which, indeed, they may be strongly opposed on political or religious grounds.... [No] (sensible) person [would]  suppose that a court could take a blue pencil to a President’s inaugural address or State of the Union speech and remove statements that may offend some members of the audience. President Lincoln’s second inaugural address, likely the greatest speech ever made by an American President, mentions God seven times and prayer three times, including the sentence: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.” The address is chiseled in stone at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. An argument that the prominence of these words injures every citizen, and that the Judicial Branch could order them to be blotted out, would be dismissed as preposterous.

The Judicial Branch does not censor a President’s speech....