Supreme Court Greenlights Yet Another Religion Case
Should the top court in the land spend its time on prayer at high school football games?
RELIGION
Supreme Court Greenlights Yet Another Religion Case
Joe Kennedy coached high school football in Bremerton, Washington. It was his custom to engage his team in locker-room prayer before a game, and gather both teams for after-game prayers. With fans still in the stands, Kennedy kneeled on the 50-yard line and often delivered a religious speech to the players. When Coach Kennedy refused to end the ritual, school officials fired him. This was seven years ago.
Kennedy sued, saying that the school board's actions violated his right to free speech and said that he would take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court. School officials said they were entitled to avoid a violation of constitutionally disallowed government establishment of religion. Both claims rely on the First Amendment.
In January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of school officials which Justice Samuel Alito had found "troubling". That was in 2019 when the Court denied hearing the case but issued a statement by Alito — joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas — that the lower court's decision "may justify review in the future".
THE RELIGION DOCKET
There were some 5,700 petitions to the Supreme Court in the 2020-2021 term. The justices are expected to hear from 100 to 150 appeals a year, but in recent years it has heard far fewer, averaging 77 in the decade between 2007 and 2018 and issuing opinions in only 67 during its 2020-2021 session.
Yet from this deluge of thousands, the justices have elevated to highest importance a case about praying at a high school football game. That, along with several cases in recent years, says that what we might call the Court's religious wing — five of the conservative justices are Catholic and a sixth Protestant but educated in Catholic schools — is on a mission to give religion privileged status in American society, at a time of growing far right insistence that this be a Christian nation.
That observation needs substantiation, so here's a rundown of the many religion-themed cases the Supreme Court chose over the last decade… Continue reading