A proposed constitutional amendment expanding the right to preach or pray in public places, including classrooms, in Virginia hit a snag today.
The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee voted to move the amendment to the Courts Committee, a moderate panel historically hostile to embedding such moral issues into the state's Bill of Rights.
Courts Committee Chairman Kenneth Stolle made the motion to move the "religious freedom" amendment to his committee. He says that clearly with all its freedom-of-religion and First Amendment implications, it belongs before the Courts Committee.
The Courts Committee is expected to take the House bill up Monday. With no companion bill in the Senate, a defeat in Stolle's committee would kill the measure for the year.