Sports & Religion

A local coach is going before the Supreme Court, because he was fired for praying on-field.

They'll undoubtedly overturn his dismissal.

I think most people agree he should be able to pray anywhere and any time he wants, as long as he doesn't interrupt the game and coerce his players to join him in the middle of the field. Freedom of religion is also freedom FROM religion, as Ron Reagan is fond of saying.

I wonder how the Supremes would rule if it had been a public Koran reading?

Arguments were yesterday. I didn't know, or I would have listened in.

The praying isn't the point, not at all.  It's doing it at mid-field, on public property, and coercing his players to join in.

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Luckily, the Constitution already provides a way to deal with that. It’s called the establishment clause of the First Amendment. And in case after case, the Supreme Court* has held that public schools violate the establishment clause when they coerce students into prayer. Even when that coercion is “subtle and indirect,” it “can be as real as any overt compulsion,” especially for students. Teenagers are uniquely “susceptible to pressure from their peers towards conformity,” and state officials “may no more use social pressure to enforce orthodoxy than it may use more direct means.” It would be absurd, the court has explained, to “assert that high school students do not feel immense social pressure, or have a truly genuine desire, to be involved in the extracurricular event that is American high school football.” In this fraught environment, the First Amendment does not allow a school official “to exact religious conformity from a student as the price” of participation.

If Kavanaugh applies these bedrock principles, Kennedy is an easy call. But he has previously signaled his support for the coach, and his other comments on Monday reflected an ingenuous acceptance of Clement’s fraudulent narrative. (Of the conservatives, only Chief Justice John Roberts punctured the shameless falsehood that the coach prayed quietly.) So there are strong odds that Kavanaugh’s probing questions were a red herring, and he will revert to form by the time a ruling comes down. If so, at least the justice gave us one moment of clarity—proof, however fleeting, that he recognizes the real victims in this case.

* - The OLD Supreme Court. The one that ruled on the merits of cases rather than ideology.

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Amy Coney Barrett - “he’s exercising “protected speech” because he’s “only taking a knee.” So it’s okay to take a knee to pray; but Kaepernick taking a knee to peacefully protest police brutality is a bridge too far?