The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overruled decades of precedent maintaining the separation of church and state in a case about a former high school football coach who was fired for engaging in visible, public prayers at the 50-yard line after every game. United States Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch (L) and Sonia Sotomayor (R) pictured posing for an official court photo. The Court’s 6-3 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton , in a majority opinion penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch , formally overrules the landmark 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman case as well as a test long used to determine whether a challenged government action gives the impression to a reasonable observer constitute an “endorsement” of religion by the state. In two fell swoops of jurisprudential revision, the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause has – as part of a consistent trend established with the Rehnquist Court and exacerbated by the Roberts Court – been heavily reworked to elide concerns about religious coercion in the context of public school students and authority figures. The activity at the center of the case was what both the majority and the dissent — penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor — described as “demonstrative” religious activity. For […]
