Reaction to SCOTUS ruling in favor of Coach Praying on the 50-Yard Line in a Public School.

#scotus

From the NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games, the latest step by the court in expanding the place of religion in public life.

The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent. 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 tuition program.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said that the prayers of the coach, Joseph Kennedy, were protected by the First Amendment and that the school district had erred in suspending him after he refused to end the practice.

“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head,” he wrote.

Bolstering religious rights, and notably those of Christians, has been a signature project of the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Earlier in the current term, the court unanimously ruled in favor of a Christian group that sought to raise its flag in front of Boston’s City Hall and, with only one dissent, for a death row inmate who sought his pastor’s touch in the execution chamber.
In the last few 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 who apply to take in foster children, that a state program supporting private schools in Montana must include religious ones, and that the Trump administration could allow employers with religious objections to deny contraception coverage to female workers.

In dissenting from Monday’s decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority had gone astray by prioritizing the religious rights of a school official over those of his students, who could feel pressure to take part in religious activities.