Supreme Court Protects Religious Liberty

Joe Kennedy, an assistant football coach at a public high school in Washington State, felt impelled to kneel in prayer on the field after games. He was disciplined and ultimately lost his job. Today, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in his favor, finding that his First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion were violated. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District rejected the school district’s irrational view that allowing a single public employee to pray by himself was the equivalent of establishing a state church under the establishment clause.

The Court went where it declined to go in last week’s school-choice decision and formally abandoned the Lemon v. Kurtzman “entanglement” test, under which an establishment-clause violation could be found any time a school was “entangled” with religion. That test never had any basis in the Framers’ ban on official state churches and proved hopelessly unworkable in practice.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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Joe Kennedy, an assistant football coach at a public high school in Washington State, felt impelled to kneel in prayer on the field after games. He was disciplined and ultimately lost his job. Today, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in his favor, finding that his First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion were violated. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District rejected the school district’s irrational view that allowing a single public employee to pray by himself was the equivalent of establishing a state church under the establishment clause.

The Court went where it declined to go in last week’s school-choice decision and formally abandoned the Lemon v. Kurtzman “entanglement” test, under which an establishment-clause violation could be found any time a school was “entangled” with religion. That test never had any basis in the Framers’ ban on official state churches and proved hopelessly unworkable in practice.