When we’re speaking on the subject of the freedom of religion, we must alway remind ourselves that it’s not freedom from religion.
That is to say that your religious beliefs can be spouted as freely as the next person’s, even if those two religions don’t exactly jibe with one another. (This is how we end up with statues of Baphomet in state-run facilities). We cannot constitutionally say one religion is superior to another, and insulating ourselves against what we wish to not witness is our responsibility and not the government’s.
Now, a high school football coach who was told not to pray on the sidelines has had his case heard by the Supreme Court, and a resounding victory for faith has been awarded.
The Supreme Court handed a big win to a former Washington high school football coach who lost his job over reciting a prayer on the 50-yard line after games.
At issue was whether a public school employee praying alone but in view of students was engaging in unprotected “government speech,” and if it is not government speech, does it still pose a problem under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday in a 6-3 decision that the answer to both questions is no.
The constitutional nature of the issue was evidence in Neil Gorsuch’s ruling.
“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,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the Court’s opinion. “Religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”
Gorsuch would go on to suggest that it wasn’t only a matter of constitutionality, but that the guiding principles of our nation are that of tolerance and acceptance, rather than exclusion and censorship.
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