Supreme Court holds public school coach’s midfield post-game prayer, with students, is protected by First Amendment

A 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court held in Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist. that a public school coach’s midfield post-game prayer, with students, is protected by the First Amendment.

Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.

The dissent noted that the prayer was anything but post-game, as it occurred during the entire overall game-night event, which the coach began with a locker-room prayer, and while student-athletes weren’t ordered to participate they were, the evidence established, effectively coerced, allowing the coach to evangelize his public school government employee job.  Indeed, the dissent pointed out, evidence showed that others viewed the coach’s behavior as a sign that the public school itself was endorsing his prayers, itself a violation of the First Amendment’s church-state separations.

Readers are reminded that the First Amendment does not apply as against private employers.

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