County commissioners in the sleepy, liberal town of Asheville, N.C., have made a “consensus” decision to end public prayer at their meetings.

The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners are set to bring the topic up for official discussion on Jan. 5. They’ll likely vote to stop opening board meetings with prayer. The move comes after a federal magistrate recommended a similar public prayer policy in Winston-Salem, N.C., violated the the First Amendment.

On Nov. 9, Magistrate Judge Trevor Sharp said the policy allowing public prayer at the beginning of Forsyth County Board of Commissioners meetings “referred to Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, or Savior with overwhelming frequency,” and that such prayers “display a preference for Christianity over other religions by the government,” according to NBC affiliate WXII 12.

Forsyth County officials are fighting the decision, and say the content of the prayers is private speech. Forsyth County, home to Wake Forest University and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, is a slightly more conservative than its sister city, Greensboro, in the urban Piedmont-Triad metro area. Despite its liberal county seat, the mountainous and rural Buncombe County is just as conservative.

Area churches have already galvanized against the plan to undo prayer before government meetings, according to The Asheville Citizen-Times:

Frue’s comments were reported on CITIZEN-TIMES.com Thursday morning and word of a change drew sharp criticism from some local pastors.

“If we put ‘In God we trust’ on our money, we can surely say a prayer before our county commissioners’ meeting,” said the Rev. J. Wendell Runion, who runs locally based International Baptist Outreach Missions, which includes Christian radio station WKJV-AM.

Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, told the daily newspaper it is legal for governments to open meetings with “non-sectarian” prayers. “The government cannot favor one religion one week and another religion another week and call that neutrality,” Rudinger said.

The federal case out of Winston-Salem might spell the end for similar prayer policies across the state and elsewhere. The News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.) reports on possible implications for Guilford County, Forsyth’s next door neighbor (Cleveland, Ohio, is also dealing with similar issues). If Buncombe County’s move is any indication, a public prayer disappearing act might be coming sooner rather than later as local governments get ahead of the curve.