The US Supreme Court’s decision to allow a high school football coach to pray on the field after games is expected to reignite a vigorous and likely tense debate among parents, educators and others about how far how far religion can enter the grounds of California’s public schools, education, and legal experts. he said Monday.
Conservatives and some Christian leaders praised the court’s action, saying it allowed personal religious expression for the coach and those who willingly followed him, a reasonable accommodation for free speech and religious rights. But civil liberties advocates and many educators said allowing a coach or other school authority figure to lead a prayer amounted to the kind of religious establishment the Constitution prohibits.
“The court has opened the door to prayer in schools more than ever in the last 60 years,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert and dean of the UC Berkeley law school. “There will be a lot of litigation. And it’s not entirely clear where the court will draw the line.”
A 60-year-old decision by the high court to ban official prayer in New York schools had created a clear line for school officials: that campus practices and policies must be for strictly secular purposes. Monday’s ruling has blurred that line and will invite additional challenges from those who want more room for religious expression in schools, said John Rogers, a UCLA professor of education and an expert in training school administrators.
“One of the results of this decision is that it will probably lead to more conflict in schools,” Rogers said. “It will likely create more challenges for principals and other district leaders as new efforts are made to bring religion into the public school space. In some school settings, religious minorities or people who are not affiliated with any religion will feel a certain compulsion or a sense of silencing or alienation.”
Monday’s decision came in the case of Joe Kennedy, an assistant coach at Bremerton High School in Washington state. Kennedy began kneeling alone at the 50-yard line after games to pray, though the sessions soon became highly publicized, drawing crowds of players and spectators onto the field.
When the prayers became a public event, school officials warned the coach that they could be seen as a violation of the Constitution’s prohibition on an “establishment of religion.” Kennedy was suspended when he refused to follow district guidance. He was not rehired for the next year.
The lower courts ruled against Kennedy, but the conservative majority in the Supreme Court found that the coach’s prayers were protected by two other provisions of the First Amendment: the free speech clause and the “free exercise” of religion clause.
“The Constitution and the best of our traditions advise mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and repression, for both religious and non-religious viewpoints.” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for most 6-3.
The court action sparked a lively discussion Monday in a Facebook group for parents who support teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District and are generally aligned with their union.
One parent applauded Kennedy’s protection of free speech and religious freedom rights, saying the coach never forced others to join prayer sessions. But several other parents demurred, saying players and students might feel ridiculed or left out if they were a minority who didn’t join in the prayers.
Other parents wondered how receptive the high court would have been to the freedom arguments if the coach in question had been a Muslim, who placed a prayer rug in midfield and bowed in prayer to Allah.
“I don’t know if this Supreme Court I would make a decision so far if it was another religion besides Christianity,” said Tracy Abbott Cook, one of the parents in the focus group. “And why does this coach have to bring religion to this moment in public? Maybe people want a break from religion and politics when they go to a sporting event. . . . Why mess it up?
Los Angeles Superintendent of Schools. Alberto M. Carvalho said district policy has already made it clear that employees can pray, but on their own time and in their own place. The district prohibits sentences that make students feel compelled to join, Carvalho said.
“To the extent that you dedicate yourself to prayer, for yourself, outside of reality [school] event, and you did not force anyone to accompany you in prayer, then that is within the railings of freedom of expression, which you do not lose when you enter a public school. he said. “If it goes beyond that, it will still not be allowed.”
But even in the nation’s second-largest school district, it seemed clear that those guidelines were not being followed uniformly.
Football coaches at three LAUSD high schools said they were aware of rules requiring separation of religion and school functions, though they said players sometimes led prayers informally, sometimes in small groups.
Stafon Johnson, the football coach at Dorsey High, said he regularly leads prayers just before and after games. “I’m just praying for their comfort, praying for … injury-free, praying for other teams that they can travel safely,” said Johnson, who said he finds the practice brings players comfort.
He said he references “God” in his prayers, but considers it a universal term and that Muslim players and coaches “participated in their own way.”
Carvalho said he would have to know details about the Dorsey High prayer sessions but they sounded “inconsistent” with district policy.
Orange County Board of Education trustee Ken Williams applauded the court for its decision, saying that the celebration of religious diversity and expressions of faith are central to American identity.
“I fully understand that you can’t force someone to pray or believe the same things that I believe,” said Williams, a Christian. “I think that’s very American, but I also think religion is important. This nation was founded by men of religious faith.”
In the Central Valley Clovis Unified School District, board member Steven Fogg said he would support a policy change to allow teachers and coaches to lead prayers at sporting events. Previously, the district only allowed students to lead prayers.
For years, the district opened school board meetings with a prayer, a routine that was disrupted after a federal appeals court ruled against the practice in 2018 in a case involving a school board in Chino Valley.
“I hope people don’t feel threatened by prayer. They shouldn’t be,” said Fogg, who is Mormon. “Prayer must not be something that arouses animosity, otherwise it is a false prayer. We certainly don’t want anyone to feel left out. It should be something that brings people together.”
But lawyers who had argued against organized prayer on school grounds said the practice tends to become coercive and exclusionary when directed by coaches and other authority figures. The ACLU of Washington noted that one of Kennedy’s players participated in the sentence against his own beliefs for fear of losing playing time if he refused.
“This decision tests the separation of church and state, a fundamental tenet of our democracy, and potentially harms our youth,” said Taryn Darling, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Washington.
“Some parties see that there is a political game to be played by making our public schools theaters of conflict,” said UCLA’s Rogers. “And I think that’s to the detriment of public schools, which require some level of common purpose to further our shared interest in developing the skills of young people to serve the larger community.”
Monday’s decision did not overturn previous court rulings that barred more direct intrusions of religion into the curriculum and the school day.
In 1962, the superior court ruled in Engel v. Vitale that the New York Board of Regents could not impose a sentence on students. The court rejected the New York educators’ proposal, even though they argued their one-sentence sentence was nondenominational.
Justice Hugo Black found that the mere introduction of the sentence (“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on You and beseech Your blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen”) was, by its very nature, sufficient. to constitute an illegal establishment of religion, even if participation in prayer was not overtly coerced.
In later decades, the Supreme Court would strike down an Alabama law that allowed one minute of prayer or meditation during the school day and banned prayers led by religious leaders at school graduation ceremonies. In 2000, the court also struck down a Texas school board’s policy that allowed students to decide, by majority vote, whether to have a student-led “invocation” at football games, graduations, and other school gatherings.
“Religious freedom protected by the Constitution is diminished when the state affirmatively sponsors the particular religious practice of prayer,” Justice John Paul Stevens said in the 6-3 opinion rejecting the school’s prayer plan. Stephen Breyer is the only justice left on the court who agreed with that view. He will retire this summer.
Reference-www.latimes.com