High court allows football coach’s prayer as private religious expression

From Washington Times.com (June 27):

The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a public high school football coach who was fired after he prayed at the 50-yard line immediately after games, saying the government can’t punish someone for what a majority of justices held was personal, private religious expression.

The 6-3 ruling may put the final nail in the “Lemon” test, a decades-old precedent that offered a strict, albeit confusing, interpretation of the First Amendment’s balance between free exercise of faith and government entanglement with religion.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said Joseph Kennedy, who coached at a school in Bremerton, Washington, proved his postgame prayer was private and no students were compelled to join him — indeed, on the three occasions that led to his firing, none did.

The school district still ousted him. It said Mr. Kennedy’s role as an employee and the public setting drifted too far into state sponsorship of religion, making some students and parents uncomfortable.

Justice Gorsuch said that wasn’t a good enough reason to trump Mr. Kennedy’s First Amendment rights.

“The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” he wrote for the majority.

Justice Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Justice Elena Kagan, argued that the coach invited players to pray with him, that many of his prayers right after the game attracted significant crowds and that his conduct was neither personal nor silent, but rather an “official-led prayer.”

She said the coach was fired after a back-and-forth with the school district over Mr. Kennedy’s behavior, which initially involved inviting student-athletes to join him, and the school was justified in seeing the coach’s actions as a “severe disruption” at events.

“This decision does a disservice to schools and the young citizens they serve, as well as to our nation’s longstanding commitment to the separation of church and state,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.

She argued that the court’s decision effectively overrules Lemon v. Kurtzman, a 1971 case that set out a complicated test to determine whether and when the government was unlawfully endorsing or

encouraging a particular faith or religion. The Lemon test, as it became known, said a government’s action must have a nonreligious purpose and its effect must not promote or inhibit religion, nor constitute “excessive government engagement with religion.”

Justice Gorsuch, in the majority opinion, said the high court “long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot” because of confusion and inconsistency.

“The court has explained that these tests ‘invited chaos’ in lower courts, led to ‘differing results’ in materially identical cases, and created a ‘minefield’ for legislators,” he wrote.  [read more]

Good.