SCOTUS Hears Case Involving Coach Fired for Praying On the Field

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

51% : If he were engaging in private speech, Katskee argued that the coach's rights "would still have to be balanced against the district's interest in controlling its events and messages, protecting the religious freedom rights of the students and their parents, and managing the workplace."
50% :Clement argued that Kennedy's midfield prayer is "private religious expression was doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses.""When the School District fired him for that fleeting religious exercise out of endorsement concerns, it not only violated the First Amendment, but it -- it ignored a veritable wall of this Court's precedents that make clear that a school does not endorse private religious speech just because it fails to censure it," he argued.
50% : Both the Lemon Test and the subsequent Coercion Test are used to check whether government action is coercing religious conduct.
49% : The Coercion Test was notably created and used in the 1990s by then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, who said public school students were "coerced to participate in state-sponsored religious events when public schools invited clergy to deliver invocations and benedictions at events such as graduation," according to Middle Tennessee State University.
48% : Ultimately, Kennedy asked the Court to decide whether a public school employee who "says a brief, quiet prayer by himself while at school and visible to students" is engaged in government speech that lacks First Amendment protections, and whether the Establishment clause "compels public schools to prohibit it."
45% : The district also used the First Amendment to justify its argument, claiming that Kennedy's prayers in view of the public and students following a school sanctioned event violate the Establishment Clause because his actions could be perceived as a district endorsement of religion.
40% : Kennedy asserted that the school district violated the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.