Religious liberty scores a touchdown

The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision Monday that former coach Joseph Kennedy has the right to pray on the football field after games as a personal religious expression. After repeatedly asking him to pray privately, Bremerton School District fired Kennedy in 2015 for kneeling on the 50-yard line at the end of matches. Some students voluntarily joined him. Administrators said his actions as a school employee amounted to government speech endorsing a religious point of view that could have had the effect of pressuring students to join in.

What was the court’s reasoning? The court considered two questions. The first was whether Kennedy praying alone but in view of students was government speech, and the second was whether it violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. The establishment clause says a government institution cannot endorse one religion over another. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the court’s opinion that Kennedy was an individual engaging in a “brief, quiet, personal religious observance” which is protected under the free speech and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. As for the establishment clause, he said the school had misinterpreted it as requiring them to ferret out religious speech, which it does not.

Dig deeper: Read Daniel R. Suhr’s article in WORLD Opinions on Sports Illustrated portraying Kennedy as a white nationalist.