Important Passages from Kennedy v. Bremerton School District

“Both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect expressions like Mr. Kennedy’s. Nor does a proper understanding of the Amendment’s Establishment Clause require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor. The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.” (p.1)

“The District also explained that any religious activity on Mr. Kennedy’s part must be ‘nondemonstrative (i.e., not outwardly discernible as religious activity)’…. In offering these directives, the District appealed to what it called a ‘direct tension between’ the ‘Establishment Claus’ and ‘a school employee’s [right to] free[ly] exercise’ his religion.  To resolve that ‘tension,’ the District explained, an employee’s free exercise rights ‘must yield so far as necessary to avoid school endorsement of religious activities.’”  (p. 2)

Thus, “the District issued an ultimatum. It forbade Mr. Kennedy from engaging in ‘any overt actions’ that could ‘appea[r] to a reasonable observer to endorse . . . prayer . . . while he is on duty as a District-paid coach.’ The District did so because it judged that anything less would lead it to violate the Establishment Clause….The District thus made clear that the only option it would offer Mr. Kennedy was to allow him to pray after a game in a ‘private location’ behind closed doors and ‘not observable to students or the public’…. [T]he District could not allow Mr. Kennedy to ‘engage in a public religious display.’  Otherwise, the District would ‘violat[e] the . . . Establishment Clause’ because ‘reasonable . . . students and attendees” might perceive the “district [as] endors[ing] . . . religion.’” (p. 2, 3).

“Now before us, Mr. Kennedy renews his argument that the District’s conduct violated both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. These Clauses work in tandem. Where the Free Exercise Clause protects religious exercises, whether communicative or not, the Free Speech Clause provides overlapping protection for expressive religious activities. That the First Amendment doubly protects religious speech is no accident. It is a natural outgrowth of the framers’ distrust of government attempts to regulate religion and suppress dissent.” (p. 4)