Christian Taliban Win Again
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a former high school football coach in Bremerton, who prayed with his players and other students on the field, could legally do so under his First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.
The high court ruled 6-3 Monday in Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District along ideological lines for Joseph Kennedy, a former part-time assistant coach. Every Republican-appointed justice sided with Kennedy, every Democratic-appointed justice dissented.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Constitution neither requires nor authorizes public schools to allow officials to pray “at the center of a school event.”
She cited the same sections of the Bill of Rights as the majority, writing that they protected students who have a right to education free from government-exercised religion.
“Official-led prayer strikes at the core of our constitutional protections
for the religious liberty of students and their parents. The court’s decision, elevates one individual’s interest in personal religious exercise, in the exact time and place of that individual’s choosing, over society’s interest in protecting the separation between church and state.”
