Bremerton Case

Bremerton Case Your Name Subject and section Professor’s Name October 8, 2024 In the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District concerning freemen and liberties of religion, the question raised by the was tremendously constitutional. The recent case of a basketball coach's prayer on mid-court after a match is similar to the legal issues raised in Kennedy. When counseling the sound legal opinion to the school district, it is crucial to employ the reasoning that Kennedy used while also considering the overall legal knowledge regarding certain preoccupations such as religious persecution and new judicial trends. In this paper, I will analyze the details of the Kennedy case and draw a correlation between the facts of the Kennedy case and the basketball coach's scenario; the personal perspective of the paper's author will be presented, as well as other related issues mentioned in other articles. Facts of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District A high school football coach, Joseph Kennedy, started taking prayer formations on the 50-yard line after his teams' games. At first, the lad whispered these prayers to himself, and then the other teams' students, learners, parents, and players started doing the same. The prayers became very public and visible, and the Bremerton School District began to worry that this religious practice in public, accompanied by a school employee, would violate the Establishment Clause (Audotorg, 2022). When the school did not cease the practice, the school suspended Kennedy on an administrative basis, and Kennedy filed an action for an alleged infringement of his First Amendment rights to the Free Exercise Clause and Freedom of Speech. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court supported the decision in Kennedy's favor and stated that the school district crossed the essence of his constitutional rights (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 2022). The Supreme Court’s Holding and Reasoning in Kennedy The Supreme Court upheld the decision in Kennedy's favor, saying that the services' post-game prayers had been protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment by a 6-3 vote. The majority opinion that Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a devotion to concentrated on the fact that Kennedy prayed after the games and thus after his official duties were fulfilled. The Court dismissed the idea that what Kennedy did meant the government was endorsing religion, adding that he was praying for himself and not for the institution. The Court also discarded the Lemon Test used for analyzing Establishment Clause cases and considered a history of the exercise of religion instead. Broader Insights on Religious Coercion and Public Prayer Thus, in one article written by Millhiser (2022), he noted the Supreme Court's "praying coach" case and explained that instilling the historical perspective of religious coercion in schools is necessary. The author Millhiser is correct; From the perspective of the Kennedy case, it is almost six decades of receiving legal alarm over public schools leading the students to pray. These concerns go as far as the Engel vs Lebanese civil war case. When the Supreme Court declared for the first time that the government could not sponsor or support a particular kind of religious exercise in school (Audotorg, 2022). These points are critical, as Millhiser explain...