Prayer in Schools: Supreme Court Ruling on Football Coach Upends Precedent | Teen Vogue

Prayer in Schools: Supreme Court Ruling on Football Coach Upends Precedent | Teen Vogue

By Mary Retta

When thinking about where to pray, a football field is probably not the first place that comes to mind. But recently, the Supreme Court expanded the opportunity for public school employees to legally lead students in prayer. And it all started after a coach prayed on the 50-yard line after a game.

On June 27, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 majority opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District determining that Joseph Kennedy, a former Washington State public high school football coach, had the right to pray on the field. In October 2015, Kennedy was placed on administrative leave for repeatedly praying after football games. As CBS reported, Kennedy then sued the school district for violating his constitutional rights to free speech and the free exercise clause. 

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Kennedy’s favor, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing in the majority opinion that “respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic.” The majority agreed with Kennedy’s claim that because the prayer happened after the game had ended, he was acting in a private capacity rather than in his public position as a school coach. Unsurprisingly, many were upset by the Court’s decision. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Court’s opinion “misguided” and said it does a “disservice to schools.”

“This is going to lead to much more prayer in public schools,” Micah Schwartzman, Hardy Cross Dillard professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, tells Teen Vogue.

***Many experts believe that the Kennedy ruling is concerning both in the short-term and in its long-term implications for the Court’s ability to use religious freedom grounds to justify laws or activities that have been previously deemed unconstitutional. “I think we’re likely to see more legislation that imposes the views of religious majorities, at least at the level of local and state governments,” says Schwartzman. 

“And when religious conservatives aren’t in the majority," Schwartzman continues, "they will demand religious exemptions, which this Court has been eager to grant, even when those exemptions impose serious harms on other people. In short, under this Court, there will be more government support and solicitude for the beliefs and practices of religious conservatives at the expense of the rights and freedoms of others.”e