WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a high school football coach had the constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games, the court’s last step in expanding the place of religion to life public.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the three liberal members of the court disagreeing. The decision came less than a week after the court ruled, by the same vote, that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state enrollment program.
Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said the prayers of coach Joseph Kennedy were protected by the First Amendment and that the school district had been wrong to suspend him after he refused to end the practice.
“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable for life in a free and diverse republic, whether these expressions take place in a shrine or in a field, and whether they are manifested through the word or with the head bowed,” he wrote.
Strengthening religious rights, and in particular those of Christians, has been a signature project of the court headed by court president John G. Roberts Jr.
Earlier in the current term, the court unanimously ruled in favor of a Christian group seeking to raise its flag in front of Boston City Hall and, with only one dissent, a death row inmate who asked for the touch. from his pastor to the execution room.
In recent years, the court has also ruled that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia could defy city rules and refuse to work with same-sex couples requesting foster care, which a program state support for Montana’s private schools must include religious ones, and that the Trump administration could allow employers with religious objections to deny workers contraceptive coverage.
In disagreement with Monday’s decision, Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote that most had deviated from prioritizing the religious rights of a school official over those of their students, who could feel pressure to participate in religious activities. .
“In doing so,” he wrote, “the court later puts us on a dangerous path by forcing states to become entangled in religion, with all our rights pending.”
The decision was one more illustration of how assertive and muscular the Conservative majority in the Supreme Court has become this term, following last week’s decisions that removed the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. . Wade and recognized the right of the Second Amendment to bear arms outside. the home of self-defense.
Mr. Kennedy said he was delighted with the sentence.
“This is so fantastic,” he said in a statement. “All I wanted was to go back to the field with mine.”
Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who represented the school board in the case, lamented what she said was the latest in a series of growing setbacks eroding the wall between the religion and the public sphere.
“Today, the court has continued its assault on church-state separation, falsely describing coercive prayer as‘ personal ’and preventing public schools from protecting the religious freedom of their students,” it said in a statement.
The case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, no. 21-418, confronted the rights of government workers to freedom of expression and the free exercise of their faith with the prohibition of the Constitution to approve religion by the government and the ability of public employers to regulate the speak. in the workplace. The decision was tense with decades of Supreme Court precedents banning pressure on students to engage in religious activities.
Mr. Kennedy had been an assistant coach at a public high school in Bremerton, Washington, near Seattle. For eight years, he usually offered prayers after games, and students often accompanied him. He also directed and participated in prayers in the locker room, a practice he later abandoned and did not defend before the Supreme Court.
In 2015, after an opposing coach told the school’s principal Mr. Kennedy who thought it was “very cool” that Mr. Kennedy could pray in the field, the school board instructed Mr. Kennedy not to ask if he interfered with his duties or students involved. The two parties did not agree on whether Mr. Kennedy complied.
A school official recommended that the coach’s contract not be renewed for the 2016 season, and Mr. Kennedy did not reapply for the charge.
The majority and dissenting opinions offered entirely different accounts of what had happened in Mr. Kennedy’s last months.
Judge Gorsuch wrote that Mr. Kennedy had only attempted to offer a brief, silent, solitary prayer. Judge Sotomayor responded that the public nature of his prayers and his height as a leader and role model made students feel compelled to participate, regardless of their religion and whether they wanted to or not.
Judge Gorsuch wrote that the coach, at least after the matches in question in the case, “offered his prayers in silence while his students were busy.”
Judge Sotomayor made a different account of the facts, taking into account a longer period of time.
“Kennedy constantly invited other people to join in his prayers and for years directed student athletes to prayer,” he wrote. In an unusual move, the dissent included photographs showing Mr. Kennedy kneeling with players and others.
Judge Gorsuch wrote that Mr. Kennedy was not speaking for the school when he prayed.
“He was not instructing players, discussing strategy, encouraging better performance on the field, or engaging in any other speech that the district would pay him to produce as a coach,” Judge Gorsuch wrote.
Instead, he wrote, Mr. Kennedy only spent a moment praying while others watched his text messages or greeted friends.
Not everything school employees do during work hours is official conduct, Judge Gorsuch wrote. If so, he said, “a school could fire a Muslim teacher for wearing a headscarf in the classroom or prohibiting a Christian helper from praying silently during her lunch in the cafeteria.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Judges Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett joined all of Major Gorsuch’s views. Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh joined the majority.
In dissent, Judge Sotomayor said Mr. Kennedy effectively coerced the students into praying with him.
“Students see their teachers and coaches as role models and seek their approval,” he wrote. “Students also depend on this approval for tangible benefits. Players recognize that getting coach approval can pay small and large dividends, from extra playing time to a stronger letter of recommendation and additional support in college sports recruitment. “
Judge Gorsuch responded that he rejected “the view that the only acceptable models of government for students are those that avoid any visible religious expression.”
In the decision-making process of Mr. Kennedy, the majority disallowed an important precedent over the establishment clause of the First Amendment, Lemon v. Kurtzman. This ruling, in 1971, established what became known as the lemon test, which required courts to consider whether the impugned governmental practice has a secular purpose, whether its main effect is to advance or inhibit religion, and whether it encourages excessive government. connection with religion.
In Judge Gorsuch’s account, the lemon test had already been ruled out. But Judge Sotomayor wrote that now the majority had overturned it.
He acknowledged that the evidence had been the subject of frequent criticism by several members of the court. “The court now goes much further,” he wrote, “annulling Lemon completely and in all contexts.”
Judges Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan joined Judge Sotomayor’s dissent.
For the past 60 years, the Supreme Court has rejected prayer in public schools, at least when it was officially required or was part of a formal ceremony such as a high school graduation. As recently as 2000, the court ruled that student-led organized prayers at high school football matches violated the First Amendment ban on the establishment of a religion by the government.
“Delivering a prayer before the game has the undue effect of coercing those present into participating in an act of religious worship,” Judge John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority in this case.
Judge Gorsuch wrote that these precedents did not apply to Mr. Gorsuch’s conduct. Kennedy.
“The prayers by which Mr. Kennedy was disciplined were not publicly issued or recited to a captive audience,” he wrote. “Students are not required or expected to participate.”
Judge Gorsuch said the message of the decision in favor of Mr. Kennedy was simple.
“The Constitution and the best of our traditions,” he wrote, “advise mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for both religious and non-religious opinions.”