Description: Standing for Constitutionalism in the Modern Day
The Supreme Court concluded its last term with several blockbuster decisions. A case we will bring to focus here, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District , has been a subject of major commentary in recent years as it has worked its way up to the Supreme Court. It has continued the theme of law and religion decisions in recent years that appear to be directing Establishment Clause jurisprudence towards its original Constitutional position held before the misdirection of the mid-twentieth century.
By means of a brief recap, in Kennedy the court considered facts concerning a school district’s discharge of a high school football coach after he maintained his practice of saying a prayer in the middle of the football field following football games. His team would gather around him and sometimes would be joined by the opposing team as he led a brief and private non-denominational prayer. The players would not be required to join and there was no “quid pro quo” of being required to pray in order to be able
Arguments that arose in the mid-twentieth century in school prayer cases heavily considered the concept of “compulsion” and the detrimental impact to those who choose not to participate in prayers. These cases began to forbid non-denominational prayer in the classroom and were often premised on atheist or non-Christian students or parents that sought to push prayer in general out of the public-school classroom. These decisions had reversed a century plus of practice where non-denominational and voluntary pa