“Petitioner Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach in the Bremerton School District after he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet personal prayer.”
That’s the first line from the US Supreme Court Decision titled Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. If you’re not familiar with the story, you can read how the Court outlines it here or from Grok author Ray, here.
Joe Kennedy became Coach Kennedy when he took his team to the field for his first game in 2008 for the Bremerton Knights in Washington State. After the final play, Kennedy walked alone to the fifty-yard line, kneeled, and prayed to God for protecting his players.
He did this after every game, and his players began to join him at mid-field for a moment of silent reflection and prayer. They had just been to battle on that same field they now gathered and prayed on. The Coach never invited or compelled his players to join him. That was something that just happened.
Some parents complained that their sons felt obligated to pray or lose their standing on the team. That was never the case, and the Coach elevated two players who were against the act of prayer to Team Captains. This decision was an act of unity and leadership by the Coach.
For seven years, the Coach led his team on the field and then took a moment to pray after the final whistle, and there was no issue with the school board. Then in 2015, a parent and an opposing coach who Kennedy had asked to have his team join him in prayer lodged complaints.
The ‘verdict?’
Held: The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.
The usual suspects dissented (Kagen, Breyer, Sotomayor), I suspect for the typical reasons (I haven’t read them yet), but I will add this. There is a free-speech component here, and the Court has been generous to free speech with 8-1 or 9-0 decisions. The fact that he was praying likely triggered the triad of liberal justices.
Meanwhile, the majority has this to say (emphasis, mine),
There is no conflict between the constitutional commands of the First Amendment in this case. There is only the “mere shadow” of a conflict, a false choice premised on a misconstruction of the Establishment Clause. School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 308 (Goldberg, J., concurring). A government entity’s concerns about phantom constitutional violations do not justify actual violations of an individual’s First Amendment rights. Pp. 30–31.
(c) Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his religious exercise and free speech claims.
In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Gorsuch notes that,
The prayers for which Mr. Kennedy was disciplined were not publicly broadcast or recited to a captive audience. Students were not required or expected to participate. And, in fact, none of Mr. Kennedy’s students did participate in any of the three October 2015 prayers that resulted in Mr. Kennedy’s discipline.
In the end, the District’s case hinges on the need to generate conflict between an individual’s rights under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses and its own Establishment Clause duties—and then develop some explanation why one of these Clauses in the First Amendment should“‘trum[p]’” the other two.
That sound about right, and I bet that’s what I’ll find in the dissent as soon as I get to it if I get to it. That clauses restricting something (in a document about securing natural rights from abuse) have more power than those protecting them. That is, after all, the only thing the Left sees in that document.
KENNEDY v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT
