Rapid City Council meetings begin with a Christian prayer. A local complaint was brought to the attention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which then drafted a letter to the council.

Several council members have said that prayer is a tradition. Council President Bonny Petersen says the council members have a few options they can explore.

Petersen says, "We have several options and probably the option that we're going to work on right now is to try to develop a policy so that we could still use prayer and give some guidelines to try to follow within what would be legal. The other option after that would probably be just a moment of silence."

Petersen says so far no lawsuit has been filed against the council. She says other cities across the country have been successful in adopting policies to keep prayer a part of their gatherings.

-Darren Leeds