In a landmark ruling today, The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the first amendment clause pertaining to free speech, protects an individual’s religious observance rights.
High School football coach Joe Kennedy lost his job as a football coach at a public school for simply praying after his teams football games. The question at hand was whether a public school employee praying alone but in view of students was engaging in unprotected “government speech,” and if it is not government speech, does it still pose a problem under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
Kennedy was a junior varsity head coach and varsity assistant coach with the Bremerton School District in Washington from 2008 to 2015. He began the practice of reciting a post-game prayer by himself, but eventually students started joining him.
After an opposing coach brought it to the principal’s attention, the school district told Kennedy to stop. He did, temporarily, then notified the school that he would resume the practice. The school district then offered to let Kennedy pray in other locations before and after games, or for him to pray on the 50-yard line after everyone else had left the premises, but he refused, insisting that he would continue his regular practice. After continuing the prayers at two more games, the school district placed Kennedy on leave.
The specific issue at hand is the Constitution’s “establishment clause” which prohibits association between religion and government. The Public School who fired coach Kennedy argued that it was justified for doing so, due to the fact that Kennedy was praying on government property, namely the public school.
The majority on the court disagreed.
“We are aware of no historically sound understanding of the Establishment Clause that begins to ‘(make) it necessary for government to be hostile to religion’ in this way,” Justice Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “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,” said Gorsuch. “Religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”
Justice Clarence Thomas who sided with the majority also questioned how prayer could ever be considered as government speech.
This court is on steroids, for the good of this great country! Long live the president who helped this along, namely Donald Trump.