It often proves useful to read court opinions without a media filter. We say that as a media filter. But for weeks now we've been reading about (and hearing about) a football coach in Bremerton, Wash., who prayed on the field, right on the 50-yard line, after games. Depending on the news source, he was in clear conflict with the United States Constitution, or was completely within his rights under the United States Constitution.
For the record, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the coach this week. And no wonder. He was hardly holding forth a Old Time Revival on the football field. He just knelt and bowed. For 30 seconds or so.
Justice Neil Gorsuch's opinion made for better reading than many of the news reports.
The coach, Joseph Kennedy (!), prayed after games for years on end, spending a few seconds on bended knee on the field, thanking God for the opportunity to coach kids. And when students asked if they could join, he told them, quote: "It's a free country." So naturally some of them joined.
"For over seven years, no one complained to the Bremerton School District about these practices," Mr. Justice Gorsuch writes. "It seems the District's superintendent first learned of them only in September 2015, after an employee from another school commented positively on the school's practices to Bremerton's principal. At that point, the District reacted quickly. On September 17 [2015], the superintendent sent Mr. Kennedy a letter."
The district explained that any religious activity on the coach's part should be "nondemonstrative." Because that's the only kind of religious expression allowed these days: the non-expressive kind.
Still, the coach didn't push things overmuch. He sent the school a letter in return, asking if he could continue a Private Religious Expression--while alone on the field. The District counter- offered: It forbade Coach Kennedy from engaging in "any overt actions" that could appear "to a reasonable observer" to be a prayer while on duty.
The thing came to a boil, and--you guessed it--the coach was told his services wouldn't be needed the next year.
Court after court ruled against the coach. Until the case reached the court that mattered. We may have buried the lede, but here's the nut graph of Justice Gorsuch's opinion:
"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. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment.
"And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his First Amendment claims. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is . . . .
Reversed."
If players are being coerced, that bends the First Amendment in an unfortunate position. But forbidding a coach from bowing and kneeling bends the First Amendment in the opposite, but just as unfortunate, direction. One wonders, if he'd have knelt in protest of some government policy, as certain NFL players have done, if Coach Kennedy would still have a job.
Thankfully this is what the courts are for. And even more thankfully, there seems to be more common sense at the United States Supreme Court these days.