{"id":1539595,"date":"2022-07-05T10:51:36","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T14:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1539595"},"modified":"2022-07-05T10:51:49","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T14:51:49","slug":"prayer-and-pluralism-scotus-victory-for-the-coach-who-took-a-knee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/prayer-and-pluralism-scotus-victory-for-the-coach-who-took-a-knee\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer And Pluralism: SCOTUS Victory For The Coach Who Took A Knee"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fprayer-and-pluralism-scotus-victory-for-the-coach-who-took-a-knee%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1539595&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Coach Joe Kennedy didn\u2019t intend to make a spectacle of himself or set an example. When he began a tradition in 2008 of offering a quiet, midfield prayer after Bremerton High School football games, he surely never thought that he\u2019d be standing on the steps of the Supreme Court in June 2022 after a seven-year battle to regain his job.<\/p>\n<p>The Court has now handed Kennedy a victory, holding that the Bremerton School District in Washington state violated the First Amendment\u2019s Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses by firing Kennedy for his personal, quiet post-game prayers.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling is significant not just because it reinforces the First Amendment protections guaranteed to government employees, but because it strengthens our nation\u2019s increasingly shaky commitment to pluralism \u2013 having diverse religious views or no religious view at all and coexisting in society.<\/p>\n<p>In writing for the six-justice majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/21pdf\/21-418_i425.pdf\">opened<\/a>: \u201cThe Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The factual <a href=\"https:\/\/firstliberty.org\/cases\/coachkennedy\/\">record<\/a> in Kennedy\u2019s case, however, was devoid of any evidence of respect or tolerance. To the contrary, the school district seemed to be under the mistaken impression that it had to scrub any private religious expression from the public square (here, school property).<\/p>\n<p>From the outset, the Bremerton school district had argued that allowing any \u201covert actions\u201d on Kennedy\u2019s part that might appear to a \u201creasonable observer to endorse\u2026prayer\u2026while [Kennedy was] on duty as a District-paid coach\u201d would violate the First Amendment\u2019s Establishment Clause, making it appear as though his religious exercise was school-sanctioned and that the government was somehow \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.govinfo.gov\/content\/pkg\/GPO-CONAN-REV-2014\/pdf\/GPO-CONAN-REV-2014-10-2.pdf\">establishing religion<\/a>.\u201d In multiple letters that were exchanged with Kennedy prior to his lawsuit, the school district mentioned \u201cendorsement of religion\u201d eight times, but\u00a0 nothing was said about any other concerns that might have prompted his termination.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Supreme Court has clarified that a school does not endorse private, religious speech simply because it fails to censor it. In Kennedy\u2019s case, Gorsuch noted that, by targeting his religious expression and nothing else, the school district\u2019s policy on Kennedy\u2019s prayers could hardly be considered neutral or \u201cgenerally applicable.\u201d As a result, the policy required the Supreme Court\u2019s highest standard of review: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/strict_scrutiny\">strict scrutiny<\/a>. Under strict scrutiny review, the School District had to show that its actions were justified by a compelling state interest, narrowly tailored to meet that interest.<\/p>\n<p>It could not.<\/p>\n<p>The Court also refused to buy the school district\u2019s argument that the Establishment Clause required a government entity to single out private religious speech for special disfavor. The government\u2019s phantom constitutional violation didn\u2019t justify an actual violation of Kennedy\u2019s individual\u2019s First Amendment rights. It believed \u2013 wrongly \u2013 that it had to suppress religious observances when a similar secular expression (i.e., taking a knee to protest police violence) was perfectly acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>Bremerton School District had focused on suppressing religious expression, rather than on Free Exercise and pluralism, and Justice Gorsuch hinted as much.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>[L]earning how to tolerate speech or prayer of all kinds is \u2018part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society,\u2019 a trait of character essential to \u2018a tolerant citizenry.\u2019\u2026This Court has long recognized as well that \u2018secondary school students are mature enough \u2026 to understand that a school does not endorse,\u2019 let alone coerce them to participate in, \u2018speech that it merely permits on a nondiscriminatory basis.\u2019 \u2026 Of course, some will take offense to certain forms of speech or prayer they are sure to encounter in a society where those activities enjoy such robust constitutional protection. But \u2018[o]ffense \u2026 does not equate to coercion.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Later in the opinion, Gorsuch again extolled the virtues of pluralism and stressed its relevance to Kennedy\u2019s case:<\/p>\n<p><em>In the name of protecting religious liberty, the District would have us suppress it. Rather than respect the First Amendment\u2019s double protection for religious expression, it would have us preference secular activity\u2026It is a rule\u2026that would undermine a long constitutional tradition under which learning how to tolerate diverse expressive activities has always been \u2018part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society.\u2019\u2026We are aware of no historically sound understanding of the Establishment Clause that begins to \u2018mak[e] it necessary for government to be hostile to religion\u2019 in this way.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Rachel Laser, was <a href=\"https:\/\/fox8.com\/news\/washington-dc-bureau\/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-former-football-coach-in-public-school-prayer-case\/\">predictably apoplectic<\/a> about the Court\u2019s ruling, writing, \u201cReligious freedom is not the right to use your power as an agent of the state and a public school coach to impose your beliefs on students.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet, nothing in the record indicates Kennedy\u2019s prayers were in any way coercive. When approached by players who wanted to join him in prayer, he responded simply by saying, \u201cThis is a free country. You can do what you want.\u201d Not exactly the stuff of intimidation.<\/p>\n<p>No American should have to choose between their<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coach Joe Kennedy didn\u2019t intend to make a spectacle of himself or set an example. When he began a tradition in 2008 of offering a quiet, midfield prayer after Bremerton High School football games, he surely never thought that he\u2019d be standing on the steps of the Supreme Court in June 2022 after a seven-year &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1059,"featured_media":1539641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1059"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1539641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}